We’re All In This Together
Another day in the pandemic, and it's looking more and more bleak. The days are getting shorter, our restrictions are tighter, and there are only so many High School Musical references I can use to make our reality any better. There are moments where I have to remind myself it’s October.
There are even more moments where I have to remind myself that life isn’t usually like this.
It’s hard to come out and say that this is the worst year of my life when I know it’s everyone else’s worst year too. I’m simultaneously comforted knowing I’m not alone and dejected knowing that I’m not special. How do we reconcile emotional discomfort on both a global and individual scale?
We've watched the whole world go through phases as we've collectively tried to cope. There's been protests, celebrity sing-alongs, whipped coffee tutorials, the Tiger King craze, and so on and so forth. Every few weeks a new trend or disaster commands our attention just long enough to push us through to the next one.
It’s like the world’s worst interval training.
And it’s naive to think we haven’t gone through personal phases too. The person who kicked off this newsletter in May is a different human than the one typing now. I think everyone is experiencing some COVID-accelerated changes, and the only thing we can do is hope that we're growing in the right direction. Not to get too deep in the plant metaphor, but without regular view of the sun, it’s hard to imagine developing completely normally.
So, maybe we're not.
Another Simpsons pic? Why the fuck not.
Maybe She's Born With it, Maybe it's Mercury Retrograde
Just for fun, let's try to pawn this emotional distress off on the stars. To a degree we can. Planets go through phases of their own, and the last Mercury retrograde of the year runs from October 13th to November 3rd.
That’s also election day, so don’t get too optimistic about the outcome yet...
Retrograde is a fun buzzword, but all it means is that a particular planet looks like it’s moving backwards in the sky. For anyone who wasn't forced to take a Classics course, each planet is also philosophically linked with different aspects of the human experience. Mars, for example, is the planet of war and aggression.
The theory of retrograde is that the backwards movement prevents us from fully connecting with whichever element is affected. Like how the moon controls the tides, it's not unreasonable to assume that other planets have a tangible pull on our lives. Honestly that's an easier argument for me to get behind than what the anti-maskers are spewing.
Mercury is the planet of communication, so articulating points and staying organized becomes harder during retrograde. Miscommunications run wild, and technological glitches cause confusion. Moreover, the backwards direction lends itself to dwelling on the past. For those who know anything about astrology, this particular retrograde is also sandwiched between Scorpio and Libra. That means this period will be moody, emotional, and relationship-focused. Expect texts from your exes and an overwhelming amount mood swings.
Bold of me to assume you weren’t all experiencing that already, but I digress.
All of this sounds like a convenient cop out for disaster, but this week has seemed extra rough to me. I've been agonizing over each sentence I've written, and my words have been anything but eloquent in the last few days. It's a harder pill to swallow that maybe I've just been an idiot recently, so I'm taking whatever solace I can from retrograde. Feel free to follow my lead.
It's a valid excuse for two more weeks.
Pink prisons are a thing, and it's a vibe
"I've Been Having a Hard Time Adjusting"
^ That was a T. Swift reference for those of you who’ve already abandoned Folklore….
I would love to blame the planets for my problems, but the universe is only so much at fault. The fact of the matter is that COVID has made me awkward. I didn’t need my cards read to clue into that.
Research has shown that social skills can atrophy over time. We know that 'practice makes perfect', and human interaction is no different. The longer we spend apart, the less time we spend working on our ability to connect. Prisoners and astronauts alike have a hard time reintegrating after long times away from society, and many report heightened anxiety and stress as they try to get back to regular life. How can you remember dinner party protocol after years in a cell? Most people can’t even remember to say 'please' and 'thank you' as it is.
Sometimes the shock of reintegrating is so bad that prisoners want to go back to incarceration. It’s not that the cell was better, but a cage is predictable and comforting in its stability. No one asks you about you “weekend plans” when you’re in solitary confinement, and there are seldom any surprises.
In the pandemic we’ve all learnt how to be quasi-comfortable in our solitude. Since March we’ve found ways to cope, and going back to any normalcy would be jarring, no matter how desperately we think we want it. Even now I find myself getting anxious if there are too many people on the sidewalk. Imagine the stimulation of a concert or party. It would be insanely overwhelming.
In adjusting to the pandemic lifestyle, a friend pointed out the difference between horizontal and vertical growth in relationships. Every year I meet new friends and widen my circle outwardly. A new acquaintance at each event, bonding with an unexpected coworker, a different coffee shop barista - the list of people I enjoy expands the longer I stay in the city.
Ever the organizer, I also like to have a person for every situation. I know the crew who wants to go dance, the ones who want to talk about career, and the peeps just looking for pizza and a movie. I created boxes for different friends and let everyone categorize themselves to maximize the good times.
This year it’s been almost impossible to meet new people and equally as hard to tend to the friendships I already have. Instead, I’ve been growing deeper in the few relationships I regularly maintain. I’ve snagged my nearby life rafts and I’m sinking them down into topics we’ve never explored before. As such, each friend is becoming a more fleshed out person, which is great in theory, but people can’t be everything for you. Some friends belong as your concert partner and not a place of solace.
The New York Times likens this to eating a balanced meal. Even if you’ve spent all of quarantine with people you love, the lack of diversity in your circle can leave you feeling isolated, sad, and lethargic. We need a range of interactions to maintain our health. Popcorn for dinner every night is tempting, but would turn that COVID19 into a COVID25 quickly..... To spin the analogy in a different way, a life raft can only last so long, but enough relationships can become a full boat. Alas, for now there’s not a ton of choice in how, when, and who you can collect into your rescue mission.
Plus, who knows how well we’ll be able to manage those relationships outside of the pandemic. As social skills dwindle, developing those acquaintance-level bonds will only get harder. I met all my closest friends through happenstance - a university lab, frosh week, music festivals. I used to joke that Mark and I met “in the wild”, meaning not through an app. But how will we meet anyone organically now?
The people I talk to every day are often the ones I chose because of proximity. I moved cities and latched onto the friendly faces I knew, but now everyone is equally as far. It’s refreshing in some respects to reach back out to those who are distanced, but it’s also a stark reminder that circumstance matters. Shared experiences matter even more. You can’t build a friendship on sharing what you had for dinner every day until eternity. There needs to be something more to hold onto than just text, but when was the last time any of us had much of that?
An educational video for the masses...
Good Grief
While this year is extraordinarily isolating, it’s also universally challenging. Around the world people are dealing with the same fears, emotions, and planetary interference.
It’s a collective trauma from our respective boxes.
And, truthfully, the impact of the trauma is probably worse since we are so disconnected. Any of our usual coping strategies are gone, and it doesn't feel like we're getting through anything together. On the contrary, we're all going through it alone and at the same time.
Of course, a major difficulty in understanding collective trauma is measuring its long term effects. We don’t have a control group who isn’t going through this alongside us, so any wide scale changes become the new norm. Right now we know how miserable we feel, but what about a decade from now? This is a tipping point in history, and it can be both a renaissance for new ideas and the precipice of a dark age for human connections.
Welcome to generations of Michale Cera level uncomfortable.
In my own life, I've tried to make sense of the phases my mental health has gone through over the pandemic. Any Robot Chicken fans will remember the stages of grief clearly from the video above. As we process loss, people move through anger, bargaining, and depression before arriving at acceptance. I vividly remember feeling all of these after the 2016 election, and I'm willing to bet I've gone through a lot of them in quarantine as well. That said, how do you process an ongoing trauma? It's much harder to pinpoint my moments of anger when there's updated case numbers each day. This stress is chronic, and we haven't had a chance to look at 2020 fully as a loss. Instead it's become a pervading pressure we've adopted into our reality.
One concept I was less familiar with were the stages of recovery. Generally speaking, recovery is defined as "the ability to live in the present without being overwhelmed by the thoughts and feelings of the past," which is impossible to achieve as this crises continues. Eventually, we will move through three key phases as we heal: safety, mourning, and reconnection, where we can rebuild in our new reality. Alas, the first step to recovery is feeling safe and stable, and that still feels like a long way off.
For now it feels like we're being held underwater. We likely won't start recovering for months, and that's a tough reality to face. We are still very much enduring this pandemic, and I'm not sure how long we can expect to withhold healing. Until then, though, we can try to find safety wherever possible. Maybe it's in watching the same sitcom thirty times, maybe it's in a weekly blog. Whatever it is for you, cling to it for now.
The mourning phase likely won't be much easier.
“This is Me Trying”
^ Can you tell I've been re-listening
At this point we have to recognize the scope of this pandemic. March felt like we were being put on pause, but going back into winter feels dauntingly permanent. The difference between a comma and a period.
It’s delusional to assume that we haven’t grown as individuals in these months, but how do we qualify that growth? Have we grown inward, more isolated, and more fearful? Or have we actually spent time tending to our inner lives in a way that’s meaningful?
I’m willing to bet it’s a combination. For me it has been. This newsletter is a great example of a panic project that is yielding some catharsis.
Presently I’m grieving that the world I knew before is over, and I’m not excited yet to see what comes next yet. I still have a hard time not referencing the “normal times” when I talk. What I’d be doing differently right now, what my plans would have been. It’s bargaining, or, at the very least, an inability to exist without 'overwhelming thoughts of the past'.
I miss the way my life was before, and it feels like the grieving is too vast to get a hold of. What is it exactly that I’m saying goodbye to? Crowded subways? I can get on board with that for the most part.
Today I've spent the majority of my morning editing this piece. I know it's not perfect, but I'm willing to sacrifice perfection for a bit of mental calm. Writing out my thoughts is a way to recognize the phase I'm in right now. Here's hoping the next phase is a little lighter. Until then let's all try to get through this retrograde in one piece, if not as one cohesive group.
