And on it goes

When I last wrote, we'd been doing an unprecedented nationwide lockdown to stop the spread of COVID 19. We did slowly emerge from that state - I can't even remember when, now - and life slowly went back to normal. 

Personally, I had enjoyed being in lockdown. It meant quality time for my family. It meant no rushing. No two hours worth of commute. I had anxious moments (as per prior post) but mostly it was a positive experience. I found moving back into a workplace where most people had choices about being there or not when I didn't, somewhat challenging. I, and many others, experienced a kind of lockdown grief. My 13yo daughter said she cried because she had enjoyed the time she had spent (at her father's house) with her 18yo brother, and now he was headed back to work and his social and love life, she would miss him terribly. 

We ended up in what our government called COVID-19 Alert Level 1 - which mostly meant life as normal for most of us. We went back to our normal movements. Nyah and I even got in a roadie to Hawkes Bay. 

After 102 days of freedom, it all (sort of) came crashing down. Community cases were discovered, so Auckland went into another lockdown. I say 'lockdown lite' as, unlike the first time around, many businesses could still operate and people could still work in some industries. For us, though, it was working from home and kids home from school again. It was non-standard kids lunches, and again, the joy of sleeping an extra hour.

But it hasn't been so much fun this time around. The novelty has worn off. The rest of the country are cautiously business as usual (they are in "Level 2") and that feels a bit crappy to Aucklanders confined to home. Kids have had to cycle rapidly back into online learning, but will likely have to cycle rapidly out of it again. My 11yo son is in his first year at intermediate, and has spent nearly two months of it in various states of lockdown, doing online learning. Its tough for a kid in a new school trying to forge new friendships. He has found much solace in online gaming, where he can remain connected to the friends he cannot see while stuck at home. If I don't feel guilty about the online school work he isn't doing, then there's always feeling guilty about online gaming to fill the gap. Miss 13 has gotten taller than me, is cheerfully resilient, emotionally intelligent, and offers hugs readily. She is maybe doing the best of all of us.

Nyah's eczema and poor sleep betray her levels of stress, but she is calm and comforting in a crisis, and we can count on her to cook her way out of our malaise.

As for me - the bogeyman of anxiety is a constant companion.

This isn't 'feeling anxious.' It isn't 'feeling worried.' Its not the intense sensation of 'fight or flight' that marks an anxious moment, and then passes quickly.

Its an ongoing sensation of not just feeling anxious, but my whole body reacting to and pushing against it in a way that manifest physical symptoms. Its ongoing tiredness, the perception of breathlessness, the feeling of concrete in your shoes as you move through your day, the loss of interest in anything other than mindless scrolling through social media, the inability to hold onto snippets of information and the need to have everything written down, the difficulty focusing.

The worst part is the knowledge that the tight chest, the shortness of breath, the fuzzy head are not harbingers of any sinister health events, but they are nonetheless very real sensations. The worst part is knowing this, but that the reality is that it is still exhausting day to day work it to constantly affirm this to myself, leaving little energy to function normally in the middle of - in case we'd forgotten it was happening around us - a pandemic the likes of which we have not seen in over 100 years. The worst part is that there is still a sense of shame that while there is 'nothing wrong with me' there is still something very, very ...well...wrong with me.

Today we learned that we are in this 'lockdown lite' for another six days. Then we move back into the steps of 'business as usual.' The steps loss and gain. 

Today I went for a skin check at a GP who is also a skin cancer specialist. He was in full PPE, and the site was managed to minimise contact between clients.

"What a year its been." He said. "Pandemics usually take eighteen months to work through," he said matter of factly. 

"It looks like we're in for another year of this."

ANZAC Day in the age of COVID

At the time of writing, our pandemic lockdown is in week 5. We are not allowed to leave home except to go shopping for essential supplies, or to go to the doctor or chemist. We are allowed to exercise outside of our homes, by walking and biking in our neighbourhoods. We have bent the rules a tiny bit by driving to the local cemetery three kilometers away, where we can wander freely while still observing the requisite physical distancing mandated by the government.

One of the pandemic initiatives to spring up worldwide was to encourage people to put teddy bears in windows as a nod to the book 'We're going on a bear hunt' by Michael Rosen. While small children cannot even play on their local playground, they could go for a 'bear hunt' around their local neighbourhood.

As Easter approached, the Prime Minister assured children that the Easter Bunny (and the Tooth Fairy) was an essential worker, so was allowed to work over Easter - but added a reminder that he might be a bit busy, so might not make it to their house (and parents who hadn't stocked up on Easter eggs pre lockdown breathed a sigh of relief)

Easter eggs started finding their way into windows or in chalk drawings on footpaths and fences. A favourite in our very Westie neighbourhood was 'Happy Easter Egg" Unintentional, I'm sure, but amusing nonetheless.

Saturday was ANZAC Day, and in a time where gatherings of any sort are not allowed, people went to the end of their street at 6am for their own personal 'dawn service.'  There were reports of a bugle being heard across the whole suburb playing Reveille. People decorated their fences and windows with poppies. The creativity was joy to behold, but do people really know what this all means?

I do not get up for dawn anything, and ANZAC Day is no different. The few years after my Dad died it became a necessary part of my grieving process, but the pain faded and the sense of duty was no longer there.

On ANZAC Day itself, Nyah and I went up to the local cemetery and visited the memorial there. It is always interesting to observe social practices, whether or not we choose to partake in them. I was drawn to an information board which talked about the construction of the memorial, and about some of the adjacent graves. The Browne family lost four of their five sons. It is a loss incomprehensible to us today.

Just over a week prior to lockdown coming into effect, we visted Te Rau Aroha - a museum dedicated to Māori contribution to the armed forces, and the heavy price they have paid. It was a solemn and contemplative place to visit. My eldest son is now eighteen years old - the age he could have been conscripted into the armed forces and sent into the unknown - and possibly to die - like so many young Māori men in the service of their colonisers. Like the Browne brothers were. Parents the world over have experienced this heartbreak. Here we are locked into our 'bubbles'* to fight a war on a pathogen, but we have each other and we have relative comfort and safety.

As ANZAC Day dawned, I felt the grief of humanity. Grief for the boys who never came home a hundred years ago. Grief for my own father's lost youth and what it took from my whole family. Grief for my own son who is safe but who I have not seen for over five weeks. I miss him.

We have no concept of the losses families have experienced through war - especially World War I. Maybe the nationalistic fervor, poppy imagery and silhouettes of soldiers with heads bowed are us trying to make sense of it all.

We cry, we sing, we get up at dawn, and in the middle of a pandemic, we put poppies on our fences instead of in our lapels.




*'Bubble' refers to the small unit of people we can be a part of during the pandemic lockdown - our own 'bubble' is myself, Nyah and my two youngest children who live with us half of the time. Due to their movement between homes, our bubble technically also includes my two eldest children, their father and his partner. Our bubble does not extend beyond this, and we are not able to see any other family or friends. 

Back for the pandemic

It's a strange place we find ourselves in.

We are in the middle of a global pandemic not seen since the Spanish flu of 1918. We are three weeks into a mandatory lockdown where we are not allowed to leave the house except to go for exercise, go to the supermarket or go to the doctor or chemist. We are working in our homes, and the kids are doing online learning. The supermarket has queues of people standing two metres apart as they restrict access in order for us to practice appropriate physical distancing once inside. People are wearing face masks. We are trying to protect ourselves from a respiratory illness that ravages the lungs and leaves its victims gasping for breath.

I felt a weight of responsibility to record the experience of being on the inside of such a historic event. Pandemics like this have changed the trajectory of life on earth in the past, and now we have so many ways of recording our experiences of it this time, it felt like something I ought to do.

But I procrastinated. Where would I write these things? I felt like recording what was happening on here would be a divergence from my lane of grappling with panic disorder and queer identity.

Then today came the collision. The physiological manifestation of anxiety came to town, and it was time to write a Pandemic Diary.

I've always had health anxiety. At the beginning of the worst manifestation of panic and anxiety, I went to an A&E doctor who gave me a script for lorazepam and told me to get a hobby.

In the early 2010s, H5N1 bird flu reared its head, and I freaked out. Alongside an emergency kit I assembled a bird flu kit for a potential lockdown. There were vegetable seeds in there - I envisaged turning the front yard into a vegetable plot.

Then on 25 March 2020 we DID go into lockdown. As part of an email exchange with my ex-husband, I said "That bird flu kit doesn't look so whackadoodle now, does it? LOL"

Just before this, the anxiety was on the rise.

On Saturday 14 March, Nyah and I went for a trip to Northland. We saw the last cruise ship in the harbour at Paihia. Entry to the country became more restricted. On Monday we got onto a boat with a bunch of tourists and sanitised our hands and tried not to touch our faces. At Otehei Bay on Urupukapuka Island, school-aged children from Europe (presumably) frolicked in the still water on a late summer day. I wondered if they would get home, and if they did, what would await them there? Europe was being ravaged by this new and dangerous virus. It was bittersweet to watch their joyous play.

I woke up that day slightly dizzy and a little bit nauseous from the anxiety. That night I drank too much at a backpacker bar to try to release tension that had built up in all my muscles.

The Sunday after this I started to worry about a deadly virus on the loose, and we had possible exposure vectors through a kid working in fast food, an adult working with kids, and adult working in retail and kids at school.

My 13-year-old daughter wanted to go ice skating with her friends that weekend, and I worried about it. She assured me the skating rink was only letting in restricted numbers. The virus had no community transmission in New Zealand yet. I waited to see what the other parents would do. In the end, my daughter said that nobody was going to go, and maybe they'd go another time. My son kicked a ball around the park with his friend next door, but I wouldn't let him go to their house. As the boys headed back to their respective house, I was hanging out washing. "Two metres!" I yelled to remind them about our new physical distancing rules.

And then we were locked down and I cried with the relief. It's hard having all of us trying to work and learn and just cope in a small space, but I felt safe. We are mostly happily contained within our bubble, as the authorities to refer to it as. About once a week, I go to the supermarket. The first time was a disaster. We are only to have one person per household go shopping. I went to the New World, which is normally one of Nyah's happy places. We stroll the aisles, me pushing the trolley, while she creates culinary masterpieces in her head as she finds ingredients as she walks. But now it was just me, queuing to get in, lots of items missing off the shelves, the stressor of finding what you need as well as keeping a two-metre distance from other shoppers, messaging Nyah to check I've got the right meat, the right chia, the right tea, and paying with EFTPOS after someone behind a perspex screen scans your groceries and packs them in the trolley. When your EFTPOS card declines and you have to get your partner to rescue you by coming down with her card, the anxiety ramps up. It's a surreal experience.

Then you have to get your groceries into your house. Messaging in the public arena has indicated this virus lives on surfaces for up to 72 hours. So now coming home from the supermarket means you wipe everything down with a bleach solution, and the shopper puts their clothes in the wash and has a shower right away.

A glass of wine usually sorts out the tensions of the weird grocery shopping trip. Its a blip in a peaceful existence.

We are financially secure (for now) with nothing to spend our money on except for 'essential' goods we can get online. That means wine, fake booze, sweatshirts, hot cross buns and bread. We have a lovely outlook across a public park and can walk around our neighbourhood. Our Prime Minister is an exceptional leader who has been decisive and has, so far, made us successful in our fight against this brutal disease. We are doing ok and there wasn't much to worry about in our little bubble.

But then an old friend came to visit.

On Tuesday I went for a walk alone. I walked up a hill and pushed myself. I hyperventilated, and remembered that one of my issues was a form of agoraphobia...which isn't a 'fear of open spaces...'
- its a fear of something awful happening in the open spaces and nobody being around to help me. What if there really is something wrong with my lungs? What if I actually can't get enough breath? None of these are rational things to think. A few months ago I'd gone back to work too soon after a cold, and felt out of breath after a walk down the hill to get lunch. I had freaked out, so Nyah picked me up and took me to A&E, where I was diagnosed as having perfectly healthy and functioning heart and lungs, and my main issue was simply going back to work too soon after a viral illness.

Today I finally hit the wall. The full physiological effects of panic disorder all came out to play thanks to an earache. I periodically get an earache on the right side of my head. All my logic tells me this is an otorhinolaryngological issue. My anxiety tells that I am going to die of a brain aneurysm. It takes nearly all the energy I have to keep the latter in check.

So here's how it feels. Tight chest. A feeling that your breath is restricted. Pain in the side of the head. Fuzziness behind the eyes. Tight throat.

It is actually impossible to put into words just how this feels. Its fake impending doom that feels real because it's actually happening in your body. I've never fainted in my life but spent plenty of time worrying that I will. It's irrational and I know it, but it feels very real. It's exhausting and it takes focus to manage it.

And then there's a level of shame. I am a pretty healthy, if a little bit overweight, adult. I have nothing wrong with me. Nothing. Ok, maybe a slightly elevated heart rate that my doctor attributes to the "little bit overweight." But nothing else. So to be struggling to get my work done because I'm focusing on getting every breath into my lungs is ridiculous. Ridiculous.

I feel like past trauma has made me more resilient generally. I have been through some big upheavals in the last ten years, and I've gotten through and been ok.

But anxiety (and its black dog brother, depression) is a sneaky bastard and will catch you in the unguarded nooks and crannies.

Its the middle of a global pandemic, and I'm not afraid of getting a horrific respiratory disease. Oh no. I'm terrified that my mild earache is a harbinger of something that will strike me down at a moments notice. Today. And all the manifest symptoms to accompany that and support that diagnosis.

I got through to the end of the day, and I'm not dead. I pushed myself to go for a walk as I know I need cardiovascular exercise. In fact, I got further than the light stroll around the park I thought my tight chest would tolerate, and ended up walking over 2kms.

If nothing else, my age has given me the perspective to know that what my body is telling me isn't always the truth, because sometimes its shit my brain has made up.

Which kind of sucks, though, at an age where people are starting to know their bodies and understand them. Sometimes I find it hard to separate the manifestations of anxiety from actual physiological events.

Just something else to be anxious about, I guess. And the spiral goes on. Or is that sucks you down?

See you for the next episode. Tomorrow? Next week? Next decade? Who knows.