In the middle of March the world quite literally shut down. I was pregnant with my second baby. (The story behind that pregnancy is a long one and hard to tell. Hopefully I will get the courage to do that at some point.) I was a anxious mess. I was nervous for me, my family, my new baby. I lived in a constant state of stress and cried a WHOLE lot. We stayed safe. Followed the advice of doctors and scientists and got through the first wave.
Fast forward to the summer- things began to open up. The sun began to shine. The weather was warm and lovely. It seemed that there was a small glimmer of normalcy showing through. We didn't go about our normal activities but we did go to the beach, my husband and I had the opportunity to go out to eat (outside of course), and we were able to play outside with our neighbors and their kids. It felt so good to be a little social and leave the house. I wanted to hang out to that feeling forever.
Now its fall turning into winter. We are back in a bad place. We can't go anywhere again. It's scary to even visit your closest friends and family for fear that you or someone else is a carrier of the virus. Restaurants have shut down. Retail is back to limiting capacity to a few customers at a time. We are back in this black hole of anxiousness, fear, and solitude.
As someone who thrives off social experiences and going places this has been tough. As someone who also suffers from anxiety and thinks of the worst case scenario for everything, I am also struggling I am also struggling with being absolutely terrified of losing a loved one to this.
With all of the media attention surrounding these events I started thinking about the words that they use to describe the pandemic. One word that keeps coming up is "unprecedented". If you look up the definition of this word it is "never done or known before". This is something that most people alive today have not dealt with. We don't understand how to not go where we want, see who want, be social, etc. We aren't used to being told to not do things for the safety of others and ourselves. It's scary. But through all of this we have to remember that we are in this together. There isn't one of us in this time that isn't feeling the affects. We have to also remember the people who are being hit the hardest. The people who HAVE lost a loved one. The people who are unemployed. The business who aren't able to sustain because of the closure. I think it is ok to feel unsure. To feel upset. To fill anxiety at times. But just know you aren't alone and that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The length of that tunnel is still very much unknown but we will get there, together.
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