One Year Since
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This picture is from exactly one year ago today. A year ago, I was overwhelmed with feelings of fear and helplessness. News reports continued to come out detailing the fatal danger and wide range of the Coronavirus Disease 2019, but even though I kept hearing about other libraries nearby closing down all locations, the one where I worked still hadn’t made any announcements. I was terrified, and I didn’t know how I could possibly keep working at my job in close proximity to a wide cross-section of the public, especially in a red city rife with science deniers.
So I focused on what I could control. I took a pair of clippers to my front yard, and cut a few of the beautiful dusty purple blossoms of hellebore, those early spring bloomers who herald the start of warmer, more hopeful weather. I wove them into a flower crown along with some English ivy from my back yard, grabbed my beautiful new wings from Fancy Fairy, put on a green medieval chemise gown, and went to my favorite forest park to take pictures.
While I was there, a father and his two daughters walked down the pathway near where I sat on a low-hanging tree branch, and he pointed me out to them as they gawked at the faerie of the woods. For just a moment, I felt a little bit better. I was reminded of my own priorities. I felt like maybe this wouldn’t be the end of all things. There was a long road ahead, but taking the pictures this day reassured me that I would meet this challenge with beauty, with magic, and with creation. I wouldn’t just wait in fear for this terrible disease to find me and take me.
March 16th will always mark the beginning of the quarantine and the pandemic experience for me. Because after I took those photos, and later that same day, I received an email from the director of the library system announcing an immediate full closure of the system with no predicted return/reopen date. I think everyone, myself included, believed at first that once the nation closed down life would be abnormal for a month or two, and then things would go back to at least close to how they used to be. My relief at my job’s closure was overwhelming. I cried, feeling released of at least my most immediate and imminent fear.
I struggle with OCD and anxiety, but at first during my quarantine, I tried to fill my time with creative projects and pursuits and the distraction was mostly successful. I had hired a friend to help me create a new personal website, a new logo, a new brand. And although she was doing all of the technical work, she still needed content: I had to choose photos, artwork, write something for my biography page, descriptions of what I do, and so on. I started going to the woods two or three times a week, finding solace in the magic of the woods, and watching it transform from day to day. I absorbed myself in my garden.
I also fretted. I was scared. I grew paranoid. Over the next few months I went to see my doctor several times about different physical symptoms, all of which, it turned out, ended up being related to my anxiety manifesting itself in my health. Eventually, he suggested I try an anti-depressant. And then the dark month of the soul happened, right as I debuted my new website; a time when I became entirely unlike myself, lost control of my ability to sleep, and suffered terrible side-effects from the medicine he had me try.
Just when I was starting to regain my confidence (and my sleep) when I stopped taking the pills in early June, I received word: the library was opening back up, and as one of the longest-term full time employees, I was part of the first group to be re-employed.
I was happy for the job security, but my anxiety started to slip again. My insomnia returned. I was terrified to return to work in a public position, even though at first the libraries would only be offering curbside service. As I mentioned, my workplace was bringing people back in order of seniority, not by location, so that meant I wasn’t sure where I would be working. I was stationed at a different library branch a half hour drive away from home, where the employees I worked with were welcoming, but everything was unfamiliar. I had worked at the same library for fifteen years. I knew its patrons, its shelves, its quirks. I felt adrift and unmoored, and of course scared to be around other people again. A month or so later, I was moved to a different location, and then later another one, and yet another one later, wherever I was most needed. Finally in February, my own branch opened back up, and I returned back to the place I knew best.
I don’t mean for this post to be a play by play of the last year. In fact, like so many of us, it is impossible to believe that this photo in the woods was actually taken an entire year ago. Time lost all meaning in the pandemic. Time froze, time stood still. I was supposed to take a lifelong dream trip to England in late April and early May. I turned 40 in June and was supposed to have a weekend celebration at a cabin in the woods with friends. I didn’t want to believe the year happened, that time actually moved forward, because I felt like I lost everything that I had hoped would happen in 2020. I wanted a do-over. I still refuse to admit I turned 40, not because I am ashamed, but because I never got to celebrate it like I wanted to.
But something else happened in 2020. The entire world, at least those of us who took the situation and its dangers seriously, went through what is known in the world of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder as ERP therapy: Exposure and Response Prevention. In ERP therapy, a person has to expose themselves to their worst fear, to fully imagine or fully picture the worst possible scenario they fear, and then stop themselves from performing the compulsion they use to comfort their terrible feelings. For an entire year, we’ve all had to sit with the possibility of our mortality, with the unknown of whether we might survive or be defeated by COVID if we caught it. Daily, we woke up and after a hazy moment or so, remembered that we lived in a world where people were dying around us, people we thought of as good respectable people still refused to wear a scrap of fabric to help stop the numbers from rising. We saw hate, we saw death, we saw lies. And not a single compulsion, no amount of number counting or repeated requests for reassurance or flipping a switch up and down in our bedrooms would fix the situation. We all had to live with our worst fears and learn how to keep on going.
I read a meme the other day that really stuck with me. I’ve seen several lately that have mentioned the fact that this past year really showed them that there are two kinds of people in the world: those willing to sacrifice for others, and those too selfish to do even the smallest inconvenient thing because they put themselves first. I feel the truth of that. But an even greater truth was from a meme I saw that said
The most important lesson I’ve learned over the past year is, don’t let anybody make you cruel. No matter how badly you want to give the world a taste of its own bitter medicine, it is never worth losing yourself.
I still hate the fact that I have nightmares in which the punchline of terror is a room full of naked faces staring back at me. I hate going to a grocery store and having the sight of an uncovered nose fill me with rage and seething fury. My anger won’t cover those noses. My rage won’t make anyone see the selfishness of their behavior. This year has opened my eyes to how terrible so very many humans can be. But I can’t let myself wallow in an obsessive contemplation of their behavior. I have become so angry. So very angry. And in some cases that fury is the flame that lights our way to action. But sometimes, and especially lately for me, it has just been burning me up from the inside, making me churlish and snappy, and generally terrible to be around. This past year taught me how to live with fear. It also taught me how terrible so many people can be. But I need to remember what it was like to be that fairy in the woods, taking early spring blooms from her garden and hiding in a tree to charm and delight the scared kids who just found out they had to start wearing masks everywhere they go. I want to be the light, the hope. I don’t want to let the anger and the disappointment consume me. I can’t let COVID take one more thing from me. It already stole so much. Whatever this next year might bring us, I won’t let it steal my joy.
