Pills
Probably we knew this was coming. Maybe we suspected it, maybe we made a joke in class or at work (remember being in class? remember being at work?) about how worried people were getting. Probably we deserved it. Look at who we elected. Look at how we treat the homeless. Look at what we do to immigrants. Maybe this is God’s will. Maybe we’ll all die. Maybe we deserve it. Probably we’ll starve. Good chance we’ll all get sick. It’s likely this is the end of the world.
Actually, we just don’t know.
Actually, we don’t deserve this.
Actually, this is probably not the end of the world.
I’ve developed a strange sleep pattern. I go to bed at my normal time, as suggested by every medical and mental health professional on earth. Two hours later, exactly, I wake up. An hour after that, exactly, I wake up again. An hour after that, exactly, I wake up yet again, and two hours after that, exactly, I wake up again. You could set a clock by this. Each time I awake, sweaty and agitated, the litany of the opening paragraph roars through my addled head. I’m going to lose my job. I’m going to get sick. I’m going to die. Everyone I know is going to lose their job. Everyone I know is going to get sick. Everyone I know is going to die.
Actually, we just don’t know.
Someone I know has had it and has recovered, and we were in the same room exactly 26 days ago, and two days later her son got sick, and then she got sick, and they got tested and it took so long for the results to come back who knows how many people they inadvertently infected. She was so apologetic, so worried about us. Some students at the school where I teach (for now; my boss opened our Zoom meeting with news from another Zoom meeting which had begun with the phrase “we hope to save jobs”) have had it and have recovered. Most people recover. Some don’t. Actually, we just don’t know.
Last year when I had surgery, the hospital required me to fill out sheaves of paperwork. End of life paperwork, because things can go wrong, even in competent, professional hands. At what point would you no longer want to live?, they asked, and I wrote, “when it became clear that I would never write again.”
I’m not writing much, but here I am, writing.
I teach twice a week through a small window, looking out into a series of small windows. I see friends through their small windows, and every other day I stand fifteen feet from my elderly mother and perform an elaborate ritual where I sanitize my hands and don a mask and then she backs further into the house while I deposit containers of food on her porch, and then I back further onto the sidewalk, and we have a conversation at a volume that accommodates her hearing aids. While we talk, joggers with the aggressive, sweaty energy of the quarantined swerve furiously around me, and I become a stubborn island in their way, refusing to budge, just trying to connect with someone, anyone, not through a screen, but in the flesh.
Two days ago I got an envelope in the mail. I opened it on the front porch while wearing dishwashing gloves. It contained two bottles of pills. Fluoxetine and Lorezepam, Prozac and Ativan. I took the bottles inside and spayed them down with bleach. Are we all depressed now? Are we all anxious? Refill the prescriptions while you still have a job, because your boss said her boss said “we hope to save jobs,” and will students want to write through this in the future? Will students want to write about living through a screen, about trying to study at a card table in the corner of their parents’ kitchen, about being the only person still living in their dorm building, about faculty who doubled the workload in a class and then wrote to our faculty listserv to boast about it, saying they have “no sympathy” for students with anxiety issues right now, because our task in this moment is to buckle up and work harder than ever before.
I cut the Lorezepam into halves, and try only to take it when, as my psychiatrist told me through a screen, I feel like I am about to die, and I know that if I go to the ER for a panic attack, they’ll just give me Lorezepam anyway and everyone around me will have corona, and I don’t want corona, and I really don’t want to give corona to anyone if I did get it. So I take half the pill, and I wash my hands, again, and I try my best to do some work, and I wonder what work means right now, and I don’t know.
Actually, we do know. We know loneliness, and worry, and we also know compassion and concern. We know heroics are happening all around us, self-sacrifice and bravery, actual leadership. We are worried about ourselves, but we are more worried about one another, because that’s what makes us human, and that’s what keeps us alive.
I’ve been watching people preaching in empty churches, synagogues and mosques, and thinking, they are still doing this, even though no one is there. And I’ve been seeing, in the background of people’s screens, their bedrooms, their living rooms, the furniture they’ve chosen, what their kids look like when they pile onto their parents, I’ve heard their dogs barking and a persistent bird calling from outside of their windows. Come out, the bird says, come outside. And sometimes we walk outside, blinking and waving from behind our masks because we cannot see a smile, but we are trying to remember that we are still capable of smiling. And we take our pills, and sometimes, we cry.