Living During a Pandemic
by Madison Diemert
By now, the entire world has been living through a pandemic for about six months. Each country has been handling COVID-19 differently— some better than others. New Zealand, for example, has had a total of fewer than 2,000 cases since then and has reopened as a country. To compare, the United States has had 8.23 million cases.
Currently, The Sock Drawer team resides in the U.S., and though we are all states apart, we are all experiencing very similar things. We have all gone back to work, those of us who are still in school have resumed classes… and we are all living in constant purgatory. None of us can go outside without wearing a mask. We are social distancing from the people we love the most, and after eight months, there doesn't seem to be an end in sight. But it's not just the five of us who are living this way. There are millions of people, not just in the States, who have been failed by their leadership and are being forced to keep their economy going through a global crisis. There are millions more who are jobless with no source of income. So for me, that begs the question: how the hell are we actually living through all of this?
It seems impossible. It feels like the country should still be under total lockdown with the cases constantly rising and the political unrest only getting worse. It's as if we're being forced to live life as if COVID-19 did not exist. You're expected to work forty hours a week and turn in your assignments on time with no exceptions. You’re to take no time off or care for your mental health because why would you, everything is fine!
At least, that's how I feel. Since March of this year, my anxiety has been out of control and I was unemployed from May until very recently. Things have been looking up, but there is still a constant reminder that we are living in a global pandemic. People are dropping like flies around us and there is nothing we can do about it. I still don't know how to get on in the current state of the world without having a daily anxiety attack. I've tried hard to take care of my mental health, but it seems like there is only so much I can do.
No number of hours played in the Sims 4 or six-dollar coffees can truly allow me to escape the reality that our country is eating itself from the inside out. There are only so many times I can paint my nails and re-watch Avatar: The Last Airbender before I gravitate back toward the depths of social media. Where my family is at constant war with each other, where the news is so dystopian I truly feel we’ve been transported to another dimension. It’s so much escapism and distraction on my end not to fall down a wormhole of bad news and imminent doom. I know I’m not alone in this, either, and thinking about that fact also creates an even bigger sense of existentialism.
I am in a constant loop of being anxious, finally feeling stable, then falling right back into my disorder once again. For now, there is absolutely nothing I can do to stop it. What can anyone do when they have no power?
