We Are Not Okay: The Collateral Damage of Covid-19
I keep seeing a pattern in social media posts that got me thinking about how delicate the balance can be in a person's life, and how quickly it can shift when the normalcy of everyday life is upended. Today it was a friend of a friend, a post that said RIP. Vague answers on what the cause of death was, but it wasn't Covid-19. Maybe suicide. More likely an overdose, like the post I read the other day about someone I met years ago when my life was significantly less "together" than it is now. The one before that was just over a week ago. Samantha. She was larger than life, that girl. She could make you laugh through the hard times, even if every fiber in your body wanted to break down in tears. She had been doing well, by what everybody said. Three weeks ago, it was my own boyfriend. Clean off heroin for two years and just impulsively decided to buy a $20 bag. Cops found him unconscious in a bank parking lot, one foot out the door, car still running. He had pissed himself, and yet they made him do the field sobriety tests once he was coherent so they could charge him with his 3rd OWI and take him to jail. And that's where he sits, leaving me to face this strange, Covid-19 modified world on my own. But at least he is alive, which is more than the others can say.
You can read the news headlines and watch the clips about this virus to find out how many people it has killed so far, but what those numbers are not telling you is how many people are dying or relapsing or having mental breakdowns as an indirect effect of how it has changed our existence. I know people who were sober for years who have tumbled back down the rabbit hole due to lack of contact with their support network. I know people who never even did drugs who have become full blown addicts since March. I know people who have had to be committed to a psychiatric facility because isolating has sent them into a hole of depression that is too deep to climb out of without help. I know people who never had mental health issues who are now beginning to understand what those of us who DO have them go through on a daily basis in our normal lives. Those of us who struggle with mental health and substance use are not afraid that Covid-19 will kill us as much as we are afraid this new way of living will send us back to old ways of coping...and then THAT might kill us. The unknown is always a little scary, but the conditions we are living under now go beyond that, and these patterns I've been seeing paint a tragic yet undeniable picture. It is clear that we, all of us, are not okay.
I'd love to say I'm rising to the challenge of living alone unexpectedly while I juggle the demands of school, work, parenting, and supporting my incarcerated significant other, but that would be a lie. I am struggling. I am barely hanging on. And from what I am seeing and hearing from other people I know, I am not alone in that regard. That doesn't give me any kind of comfort. I'm not a misery loves company kind of person, so the knowledge that other people are feeling as disjointed and unstable as I am only serves to add to the challenge of keeping myself together. The simple fact that I am even making time in my schedule to return to this blog after nearly a year and a half of silence is just one more indication that I need people...and that's something that I think we are all beginning to understand better as this crisis plays out. We need each other. People are social creatures, they need interaction with other human beings in order to survive. And not just any kind of interaction, but MEANINGFUL interaction, the kind that makes you excited about being alive. The lack of that interaction is taking its toll on the world, and it makes me wonder if when this is all over there will be more indirect casualties of Covid-19 than direct ones. I wonder how many marriages will end during this time? How many children will end up in foster care? How many people will lose their businesses and their life savings and end up taking their own lives? How many people will fall into alcoholism or addiction? How many people will die of overdoses? How many people will resort to crime to provide for themselves and their loved ones? These are the questions that the news is not answering, because while the virus itself may be scary, the fact that it will completely shatter the lives of so many vulnerable individuals is something that most of us are afraid to even think about.
But I'm thinking about it...when I am alone, at my house, with the silence and the emptiness and the uncertainty, I am thinking about it...
You can read the news headlines and watch the clips about this virus to find out how many people it has killed so far, but what those numbers are not telling you is how many people are dying or relapsing or having mental breakdowns as an indirect effect of how it has changed our existence. I know people who were sober for years who have tumbled back down the rabbit hole due to lack of contact with their support network. I know people who never even did drugs who have become full blown addicts since March. I know people who have had to be committed to a psychiatric facility because isolating has sent them into a hole of depression that is too deep to climb out of without help. I know people who never had mental health issues who are now beginning to understand what those of us who DO have them go through on a daily basis in our normal lives. Those of us who struggle with mental health and substance use are not afraid that Covid-19 will kill us as much as we are afraid this new way of living will send us back to old ways of coping...and then THAT might kill us. The unknown is always a little scary, but the conditions we are living under now go beyond that, and these patterns I've been seeing paint a tragic yet undeniable picture. It is clear that we, all of us, are not okay.
I'd love to say I'm rising to the challenge of living alone unexpectedly while I juggle the demands of school, work, parenting, and supporting my incarcerated significant other, but that would be a lie. I am struggling. I am barely hanging on. And from what I am seeing and hearing from other people I know, I am not alone in that regard. That doesn't give me any kind of comfort. I'm not a misery loves company kind of person, so the knowledge that other people are feeling as disjointed and unstable as I am only serves to add to the challenge of keeping myself together. The simple fact that I am even making time in my schedule to return to this blog after nearly a year and a half of silence is just one more indication that I need people...and that's something that I think we are all beginning to understand better as this crisis plays out. We need each other. People are social creatures, they need interaction with other human beings in order to survive. And not just any kind of interaction, but MEANINGFUL interaction, the kind that makes you excited about being alive. The lack of that interaction is taking its toll on the world, and it makes me wonder if when this is all over there will be more indirect casualties of Covid-19 than direct ones. I wonder how many marriages will end during this time? How many children will end up in foster care? How many people will lose their businesses and their life savings and end up taking their own lives? How many people will fall into alcoholism or addiction? How many people will die of overdoses? How many people will resort to crime to provide for themselves and their loved ones? These are the questions that the news is not answering, because while the virus itself may be scary, the fact that it will completely shatter the lives of so many vulnerable individuals is something that most of us are afraid to even think about.
But I'm thinking about it...when I am alone, at my house, with the silence and the emptiness and the uncertainty, I am thinking about it...
Very well written and many points to give deeper thought to.
ReplyDelete