Corona Diaries - The Fear
8.04.2020
At the moment emotions are running high. From talking to my loved ones and casting an eye over twitter I’ve noticed that from one day to another any one person can feel either calm and contented or panicked and scared. Plus all the in between. Anything can impact how someone feels day to day, with personal circumstances and the news both playing a major role at the moment. At the very beginning of all this I felt an unmistakable jolt of fear, and I know quite a few others did too. It was alien and scary and all we knew was how awful it was in China and Italy. We’d known it was coming but it was possible to push it to one side and hope it didn’t hit us too hard. Then suddenly there was BoJo, sitting in a chair and delivering us a message with a real ‘Britain is at War’ vibe. As I’ve mentioned before, my husband was ill, my Dad already had been, and suddenly I was stuck at home with a man mirroring many of the symptoms we’ve been told to look out for and not able to visit the other one who was suffering. That was the first time it felt real.
After a while that feeling faded and, as happens so often in life, we learned how to press on and tried not to dwell on it all. We found joy in the things we still could do and celebrated every day my husband could breathe a bit better. We spoke to family and friends on FaceTime. When you’re in your home watching Netflix, cooking leisurely and from scratch, taking your State mandated walk with your face tilted towards the Spring sunshine it feels okay. We can pretty much wobble along doing this for a while. I know that everyone is having this experience so it’s not that I take it for granted but I think that most people do feel a little bit disconnected from the main issue at hand. They’re grateful for that, it means they’re probably safe and sound, but it both invokes guilt and can lead to a lowering of your guard. It’s the kind of thing that makes you wonder whether you’re worrying too much about your family popping to the shops, or if it’s okay to bend the rules on how often you can go out per day so you can do a dog walk and a run.
When Boris Johnson was admitted to the ICU last night it shocked a lot of people. People who aren’t necessarily very patriotic or BoJo fans. That wasn’t really the point. It wasn’t a big deal when they all first tested positive, but it was the sudden severity, the real risk that he might not make it that for some reason left us all feeling scared. It’s not that we care any more about him than about our loved ones or the NHS doctors and nurses. It’s just some primal response to the idea that the person who’s supposed to be leading us through this can be brought down by it. A face that we see daily, agree with, disagree with, laugh at. That he could be affected so severely by this virus we don’t understand. As a knock on effect everything else suddenly felt more terrifying.
I started writing this the night he was moved to ICU and it’s taken me a couple of days to mull over my feelings. As a result I’m personally in a better place than I was but for about 48 hours I felt highly anxious about all of us, considering every risk out there again and regularly checking for updates on his condition. You can’t constantly maintain that level of fear. Even if it’s possible it’s too exhausting, people still have to run their households, look after their kids, maybe even try to earn some money. But I think it is a visceral sensation that will keep popping up from time to time, reminding us what’s going on and leaving us feeling shaken. As horrible as it is fear also pays a role in keeping people alert and safe. I guess we should be grateful for the rest of the time though, when we don’t feel that way.