Leaning Into the Pandemic Anxiety
If you’re like me, you are probably having a hard time turning off your brain at night. From the moment you wake up until the moment you lay down in bed, trying to convince yourself the day is over, you just can’t turn away from what is happening. That’s a good thing. Stay on top of it as we gradually descend into a dystopian waking nightmare. Okay, that’s enough news. What now? Read a book? Watch Netflix? Avert your eyes, and watch—Contagion? Really?
Source: https://www.amazon.com/Contagion-Marion-Cotillard/dp/B006IVBSBU
It isn’t just any nightmare after all, it’s that one you read about over and over again. The one you couldn’t get enough of. The one you expected. The one where all the characters reacted exactly like you knew they would. But it isn’t on the page and screen anymore, it’s at the door. The story of it moves agonizingly slow like a week in lockdown, and you can’t stop scanning the headlines for the glimmer of hope that comes around the end of act two. Where is that shiny bastard that could save us all?
For the first few weeks of the pandemic, we were faced with a decision when it came to how to entertain ourselves during all this. The better half of the books I consumed in the last decade (or more), were at the very least, set against the backdrop of a deadly disease. It’s a helluva way to world build and a damn good way to squeeze a hero’s journey out of the boring, ordinary world. So when the news starts to look stranger than your favorite fiction premise, where do you turn?
Some go for reality tv. Documentaries about murderous white trash tiger owners is a good place to look away. Maybe you can bury your head in romantic comedies? Serial killers are a tangible fear I can see. I wonder who’s out there murdering people right now? Everyone is home, the cops are busy beating people to death, and—Oh come on! Is there anywhere safe?
I have a suggestion that works. Lean in. Lean all the way in.
Source: https://www.amazon.com/Stand-Stephen-King/dp/0307947300/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1593280758&sr=8-2
After a few months of reading books and watching movies that had zero relation to all this, all the while checking my news feed for certain death creeping ever closer, I did the opposite of what I thought was healthy. I dusted off my copy of Stephen King’s The Stand, and later that night, I fell asleep with that heavy tome on my chest. I slept like a rock, and the impulse to check my phone started to fade just a little bit. Why?
The Stand isn’t about a virus the characters can defeat. In fact, it kills everyone but the central characters in the first hundred pages. But I had stumbled on a solution to my constant pandemic anxiety, and it’s linked to the very reason we read that type of story. Survival. We love to see people surviving. We find a character with whom we relate, and we want to think we would make it too. There’s a reason The Walking Dead is still on, and it’s the same reason Amazon keeps suggesting you rewatch Outbreak. We want to know how we survive this. It’s okay to go extreme here, folks. The more intense the comparison, the more our current situation doesn’t seem so bad.
Source: https://www.amazon.com/The-Walking-Dead-Season-1
Source: www.playstation.com
Immersion therapy doesn’t stop there. Last week, the incredible The Last of Us Part II arrived on PS4 to allow us twenty-five long hours of creeping up on infected and spraying bullets into other survivors. Before that, I was having a good time avoiding hordes of the undead in Days Gone. A video game is also a great way to forget you are stuck in your apartment for the foreseeable future.
Source: www.playstation.com
Everyone on Facebook is telling you to stand together, don’t look away, and I agree. This is a moment in history that, for better or worse, has come for us all. Maybe you have to get up and work from home in the morning. Maybe your job is “essential,” and you’ve spent every day since March terrified because people won’t wear a mask to protect you while you make eight bucks an hour. Either way, you’ve gotta get out of your head. Sometimes the way out really is through.
