This is My 19th Covid Meltdown

This is My 19th Covid Meltdown

Last week I had a true Covid-19 meltdown.

It began when the facilities group where I work began sending me notifications that they were cancelling all of my conference room reservations. Some of these reservations were for long-standing weekly meetings involving over 50 attendees, so having the right room is important. I pushed back, a knee jerk reaction on my part, and the answers I was getting back? Well, they simply didn't compute. 

As I tried to wrap my brain around what was happening, I could sense and feel my internal wiring short-circuiting. 

It was only when I realized that they'd changed the name of the conference room to something like Covid-19 War Room that I got the message. 

You see, in my mind... this work from home thing is temporary. Any day now, I thought, we will return to the office and pick up right where we left off. We'll all soon be sitting in conference rooms, hour after hour, side by side... all of us wishing we were still working from home.

But... no.

Suddenly it occurred to me that was not the case. That we are never going to go back to the way things were. The world has changed... forever. And I will be working from my little bunker going forward... forever.

Images from the movie 1984 filled my head. The cold austerity. The isolation. The fear. 

Annie Lennox crooning in the background.

It shook me cold.

Given our current political climate and the cry for social change, visions of a dystopian nightmare began to occupy my thoughts. I felt horribly overwhelmed. 

And terribly alone. 

That's about the same time I started to notice all these reports and personal accounts of how all this was negatively impacting people's libidos. So, not only was it going to be a cold world... it would be sexless, too. 

Well, needless to say, I was just wrapping myself up in a burrito of insanity. I simply couldn't stand the thought of my tiny life shrinking even more.

I tried to explain what I was feeling to my work wife via email. She didn't get it. That's because she is going out... sitting on patios and having drinks with friends. She is travelling to friends' houses for weekend stay-overs, lounging by their pools. She's even going into the office once or twice a week. 

I tried to explain to my boyfriend. He told me I was over-reacting. That things will return to normal once there is a vaccine. That's his belief... the flagship, the beacon of light which keeps him sane.

But the virus is mutating. Today, it's Covid... tomorrow, who knows? It could be something else. 

More than ever, I am convinced all those science fiction writers, with their apocalyptic views of future society, got it right. I could see myself hunkered down in a bare-essentials tomb, staring at a screen in order to stay connected to society while learning of the world's events via sanitized propaganda news outlets. 

Which is why people are out there protesting. To fight this... all of it; the injustice, the current administration, the corruption, the authoritarianism... that future. They want to feel a part of life. They want to be living it... not just surviving it. They want a say in what tomorrow looks like.

Even the Covid anti-maskers. I get it. They are terrified of change and of the thought that change could be permanent. It's not only that they resent being told what to do. They fear the way we used to live our lives? That could be over. So they rage against it - even at their own peril. 

Because one can, indeed, live too cautiously. One can live life so cautiously that one has no life.

Me? I feel I have to air on the side of caution. I can't afford to have anything happen to my mother, my ex or my boyfriend. And right now... they are my whole world, on a daily basis. Their welfare is in my hands, just as mine is in theirs. 

So, I buckle down and try to remain grateful. 

And I try to let go of things that are non-essential. Like the prairie. And sex. And happy hours.

I keep telling myself that I have to work with what is available. If I want to exercise? I have to make do with what is on hand. If I want middle eastern food? I have to learn to make it myself. If I want a happy hour? Crack open a bottle. 

I read. I play piano. I learn a new song. I take the dog for walks. I bike. I clean. I work out. 

I have plenty to occupy my time...

...it's my mind that seems to be the problem.

It's living in a tiny bunker of its own design. Creatively coping... while all around it, sparks are flying, as its circuit board threatens to overheat. 

Is the sky falling?

Or is it just raining stars?

19th Nervous Breakdown - The Rolling Stones

DoublePlusGood - Eurythmics