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.
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