Surviving A Pandemic Is Like Surviving A Stroke

Welcome to my world

Some thoughts on how the pandemic is like suddenly having a stroke and becoming very physically disabled.

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You are shocked, terrified and anxious. Your mind is reeling. One day everything was fine. The next day it wasn’t.

Life is surreal. It’s so bizarre that you think you must be in a bad dream and you will wake up soon.

You have a maddening, rumbling, deafening, excruciating feeling of imprisonment. You’re incredibly frustrated with being in your home.

You have a feeling that there’s SO much to do, SO much to be seen, SO much life to be lived and you’re inside all the goddamned time!

Your phone and computer are now your portals to the world, the way that you connect with others.

The dread is suffocating. How long will this last???

You can forget, for a minute, that a pandemic is going on... maybe you even daydream. And then you are cruelly jolted back to reality.

This life is unrecognizable. You miss your old life.

You realize you can exist with the same three pairs of pants and three shirts, day after day.

Travel is off the table.

You have to get things delivered now because you can’t go out.

You intensely, desperately miss the touch of another human being. A hug would be so good right now.

People around you talk in saccharine tones about the “new normal”. But if this is the new normal, it makes you sick to your stomach. This can’t be real.

You feel stranded, isolated, and deprived of the life you should be living.

You had big, ambitious, optimistic plans about the future, which have now evaporated. Poof.

You keep asking, when will this end? What will happen next?

There. Is. So. Much. Empty. Time.

You very quickly lose most of your money. You suddenly can’t work. You need the government to help you, or you will slip into poverty.

Life becomes about very simple things. Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. Sleep. Repeat.

The money you have, you must carefully guard. You cautiously approach every expense.

You miss everyone. Deeply.

You watch A LOT of television.

Anxiety, uncertainty and dread plague you, and you are deeply uneasy about the future.

Now that you don’t see them in person, some people that you thought were your friends don’t really seem to care about you.

You feel at the mercy of forces infinitely larger than yourself.

Again, for the 1000th time, you’re restless from being cooped up. You could jump out of your skin.

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Now imagine all of these things are YOUR reality, but the outside world is still going on, your friends are still out having fun, the shows you want to see and enjoy are still happening, the world is still galloping along at a breakneck pace and you must stay in your home and watch it go by.

A big difference between your current experience and mine right after my stroke? You can still move, probably even still walk. You have the ability to move easily from your bedroom to your kitchen to your living room. You can still (blessing of blessings!) leave your home, even just for a little bit and see that outside world again. Imagine that you not only couldn’t leave your HOME, but that you couldn’t move from your BED or your CHAIR.

Have some empathy for your chronically ill and disabled friends and family, who have been living this isolated life for years or decades already. Because no one was effusively clamoring for #AloneTogether or #TogetherApart for them.

Additionally, be grateful. Your isolation has an end date, at some point. For many disabled people the isolation is permanent.

With a friend, I made condensed version of this into a 4 minute short film, available below & here: https://youtu.be/takMTvbqSxU