Category: Still Life: The Corona Diaries of an Existential Therapist. (Page 4 of 4)

I don’t experience my hands in the same way. I am suddenly self-conscious of what they touch, how much they touch and the extent to which they randomly, habitually touch. I increasingly fear and value this human touch.

For now, we have more questions than answers. At best, science can give us a reasonable, worst case, statistical guess. In these scenarios, those of us who might have touched the same till counter, paid the same car guard or driven through the same toll gate; might only show symptoms just as lockdown ends. We might only become alarmed enough by our own symptoms five days after that. All the while, we would have infected between 3 and 6 other people with a simple touch. We have to hope that none of those people were too old or vulnerable to survive our embrace. We have to hope that they didn’t unknowingly touch too many others.

The places we went, the things we touched, the coughs we could not suppress in the past, will dictate the number of deaths in the future. As I sit here gazing at the clearer than ever stars, what we are seeing now actually happened in a yesterday. The things, people and places we have touched are making a deathly ripple through time.

Please touch me, I’m petrified.

I just learned of a friend’s father dying of the virus. Her Facebook post tells of dropping him off through a tented entrance at hospital and not having any further access to him. She now, in her own quarantine, has no access to her young adult children. I can’t imagine the anguish – not having access to the ones you love in times of shared suffering. That is perhaps the greatest tragedy of this virus, the way it manages to force us into distancing. It is in these moments that it is hard to keep the panic at bay. It is as if something just rolled a giant dice across the planet – life has become a bit of a gamble. It’s only been 4 days but I miss my youngest son so deeply. His vibrance brings me life. I was asked on radio today if I have any suggestions for how we can manage. I don’t know if I do, but I heard myself saying that it starts with accepting the situation we find ourselves in. From there on we will need a resilience we might never have thought we had. And, lastly, we will need to find some hope.

The nation sat glued to their screens at 19h30 this evening in anticipation of the Presidents next move. We haven’t been in the habit of placing hope in our leadership since the end of the 90’s. It is unlikely that the intervention models applied in Europe will work for us. It seems we might have cracked a deal with China. Who knows what the implications of that are but we can only hope that we will come up with a unique enough solution.

Sartre encouraged that we should not mistake disenchantment for truth.

We sometimes have to make tough decisions. Deciding to end my marriage was one of them. But those kinds of tough decisions often lead to something new. Since then I have found myself living a life that is so much more true to who I am. Not all decisions are like that. There are some decisions in life that come with great pain in order to mitigate the possibilities of other pains. On Thursday I had to make one of those decisions. Anticipating that I would not be able to have access to my two boys (who were staying with their mom at the time) during lockdown, I made the call to split them. I think it was the hardest call I have ever made. Especially given, in all honesty, my self-righteous opinion that they would be better off with me. I also knew that I might become consumed by attending to people’s anguish during lockdown and might not have been available enough to them if they were with me. It was difficult, impossible even, to know what might be best for them. In the end, my eldest son came with me. He cried all the way home “I think it is just the fairest thing if one of us is with you”. That is not the kind of decision a 12 year old should have to make.

But, there will be many difficult decisions ahead of us. Especially for those working in healthcare. Sometimes there is no right decision to make. There are simply decisions to be made and someone has to make them.

I wake up to the pleasure of a sea view. For the last couple of days I have been able to make out the silhouette of a cruise ship half way in from the horizon. What do they see when they look onto our shoreline? Do they even have a view? Are they perhaps isolated to their cabins? Floating in a potentially exiled viral incubator; imagine the fear; imagine the isolation.

I am suddenly struck by the privilege of spaciousness. The freedom I have within my confines. I moved my “office” up onto our bedroom balcony. I want to at least feel like I have some sort of “outlook” on things as I try and talk my client’s through their own experiences.

I take a look through the scope. It is definitely a cruise ship. But the seas are so rough today, it is hard to make out the name of the ship. It feels like the sea’s turbulence is telling a story. It tells of the fears within me I am trying to hide. No matter how much space I have to move within, fear will narrow down my consciousness. It will leave me feeling cramped and optionless. I need to keep the mental room to manoeuvre. The first deaths are reported. I know I must try and embrace what is ahead of us. I tried not to read too much today. There is only so much anticipating I can do. I close my eyes and listen to the wind. I take a sip of my morning coffee. This moment is a privilege in an otherwise difficult day.

I woke up this morning to the disturbing stillness outside my window. Not the usual sounds of people readying themselves for the day. A stillness that is difficult to be within because we don’t know what it holds for us. I tried to take some solace in the distant crash of waves, the sound of birds in the trees, but they only reminded me that I am just a biological organism, vulnerable to the elements. Although I had a busy day ahead of me, I could not shake the feeling that my real task is just to survive.

We are, however, more than just ordinary organisms, we are meaning making organisms and it is from within this stillness that we are likely to start to reflect on this experience: what it means to be alive in our times. We will start to contemplate our own potential insignificance and we will, hopefully, start to seek out some sort of renewed purpose going forward. We will also have to come to terms with our deeply ingrained habits of thought and behaviour. It is unlikely that the things that have worried us in the past will become suddenly irrelevant. It is more likely that they will appear more relevant than ever. You might become aware of the role of alcohol in your life, some of the food you sometimes comfort yourself with, or the need to get up every day and feel like you are “doing something”. The task ahead of most of us is to consciously do “nothing”. We are most likely going to seek out ways of distracting ourselves from this task. Although your anxieties might seem trivial in contrast to others facing starvation, this won’t prevent you from feeling like you are peering into the things that usually make you fearful with a great big magnifying glass. The stillness might also make known to us the things we both most value and struggle with. Especially those aspects of our relationships. As we all try to avoid a virus “out there”, the stillness will reveal to us the things we have being trying to escape “in here”.

Humans have an inherent need to feel connected to somebody and something. That need is so overwhelming, we might even risk infection to have it because the absence of that connection can be our ultimate form of isolation. This is most likely going to be a time when we cherish the genuine connections that we do have. I think the worst outcome is for any of us is to feel isolated within our isolation. For those of us with the privilege of isolating with others, we need to be sure that our own anxieties do not create barriers between us. The enemy is not each other. There is no enemy. This is really about making sense of our biological survival. Together.