And the Second Shot Was Hope

2/19/2021

Today I had the privilege of receiving my second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. As such, I arrived at Lincoln’s Pinnacle Bank Arena masked up, cheerful, and a little overwhelmed. I’m not used to being in big groups of people anymore. Being an immune-suppressed person living through a pandemic has changed both how I live and who I am.  

Short lines, long lines. Organization and disorganization. “Moderna or Pfizer?” again and again. Checklists on sanitized clipboards. A flash of cold on my deltoid, and a poke, and then a band-aid. My vaccination card--who knew a tiny piece of paper could be so precious?--handed back to me.

During my post-vaccine wait time, I sat on a metal chair in the back, the seat nearest the windows. My fifteen minutes passed. I stood and walked through the rows of chairs, eyes straight ahead. In the before times, I used to make eye contact with others. I used to smile and make small talk. I don’t do that these days. I was aware of how very alone I felt, even amongst so many people.

Someone caught the sleeve of my coat. I admittedly flinched and jerked back, on instinct. Because we don’t touch each other anymore, you see.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said an old man in a dark green jacket. His scant hair was as white as the N-95 mask strapped across his face. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s okay.” My hyperactivated body said it wasn’t, but my heart said it was. His brown eyes, all I could see on his face, were kind.

“I just wanted to tell you—you look so much like my wife.”

“Oh.” I paused. In the before times, I would’ve instinctively known how to be, how to act. How to make this person feel comfortable, even though he was the one to reach out to me. That’s just what I do.

Did. That’s what I did, before.

“Thank you,” I finally went with.

“She had big brown eyes and dark hair, like yours. I know I can’t see the rest of you—the damn masks—but you are like her. A beauty.”

“That’s very kind of you to say.”

Here, his eyes crinkled. Not a happy crinkle. “She died last year.”

And my own eyes must have given something away—did they dart back to the shot clinic?

“Oh, no, it wasn’t the virus. It was just her time. We’re old,” he said.

“I’m sorry about your wife,” I said. “You must miss her.”

“I do.” He shifted in his seat, pulling his baggy pant legs down further on his thin legs. “Anyway, I just couldn’t let you go without saying hello.”

“Well, hello,” I said, smiling under my mask. I might have reached out to shake his hand, if we did those things now.

“You have a good day, miss.”

And I opened my mouth to say, “you too,” but he wasn’t finished. And I’m glad he wasn’t finished.

“I hope you get to grow old, like my wife did. Maybe this shot will help you.”

It’s funny—when I think about times I’ve been very moved, I think about hour-long client sessions, entire books, meaningful conversations with friends. And now, I will always think about how these two sentences managed to melt my heart, one so long frozen with fear and isolation. 

For nearly a year, I’ve felt like I’ve been fighting for my right to live. As I’ve watched many people around me making no adjustments to their daily lives, I realized they didn’t care whether I lived or got sick or died—or, they may say they did, but were unwilling to make the sacrifices that backed up that statement. I’ve stopped feeling like other humans are inherently good. I’m not the self I was in the before, the self who believed in the power of others and who thought love would always, always win. I’ll probably never be her again.

And yet, when the stranger said to me, “I hope you live,” I cracked a little, and felt some of my old self seeping in through those jagged breaks. There was something special, something transformative, about this other human saying in real time, right to my face: I want life for you.

Maybe I’ll never be as hopeful or as willing to count on others as I was in the before. But maybe, also, there is still goodness in the world.

With tears in my eyes I said, “Thank you. You have no idea how much that means to me,” and me and the man said our goodbyes.

I showed up today for a COVID-19 vaccination, a serum that will reprogram my immune system to act differently in the face of the virus.

And I left with a different kind of instillation. Love and restored belief in serendipity and the most powerful, the most dangerous of the things, hope – those flow in my veins now, too.

I wonder which shot will help me more.

The Pandemic Pull

It’s a confusing time to be alive, amiright? I honest-to-God feel like I’m living in some kind of macabre TV show, a Groundhog Day/The Good Place/The Walking Dead mashup.

Every day brings a new challenge, usually in the form of an ethical or moral conundrum. We don’t want the economy to collapse, so we want to open up—but if we open up too soon, we may amp the spread of virus and overwhelm our healthcare systems. We yearn to see our family and friends, but wouldn’t be able to live with ourselves if we unknowingly carried COVID-19 to anyone we love. We want to support our local food places by ordering take-out, but are we bringing virus home on the food containers?

The very hardest thing for me lately, though, has been the polarity of my emotional responses. They are, in layman’s terms, “all over the fucking place.” Those who know me well know I’ve never exactly been a “medium emotion” kind of gal—I tend to have big feels. But this? The reactions that are coming with this pandemic bullshit? I’ve never felt so drawn and quartered, so pulled in very different emotional directions all at once:

I am in love with humanity for the sacrifices many have made to protect people at risk. I am disgusted with the many who continue to act in ways that puts their entitlement, shortsightedness, and lack of empathy on display. I am so grateful to be able to work: for the sense of agency and usefulness, the structure, the income. I am exhausted with the weight of others’ despair, anxiety, and grief. I want to be as connected as I can to my family and my world. I want to be alone as much as possible. I want to swallow the news cycle whole. I want to never hear the words “uncertain times” again. I am doing enough. I am never enough.

(I honestly get tired just reading that paragraph.)

If I were my client, I'd say to me, “You don’t have to choose. You don’t have to be either happy or sad, you can be both. People are neither entirely good nor bad, they’re both. Let it all in. Make room—I know you can. Let all the feelings make you bigger, so that you have more space in you the next time something is hard.”

And yet. Suggesting to anyone that they can hold all of these pandemic feels at once—the rage and the compassion, and sorrow and the hope, the restlessness and the acceptance—it’s a big ask. It’s so much holding. It’s exhausting. And I’m feeling it.

And I wonder if you are, too. 

Annals of a therapist during COVID-19: Day 1

3/26/2020

I’d intended, since I went into social isolation about twelve days ago, to write a few blog posts. Funny, uplifting stories and perspectives was the goal, because I think now more than ever, we need the ability to find joy and laughter.

And I might still do that. All bets are off.

But I haven’t yet been able to access that part of me that can pop off a funny anecdote like it’s nothing. The inside of my head is usually a ticker tape parade, colorful and chaotic and overwhelming, and often joyous. Now, though, it’s more like a funeral procession. My brain mechanics feel rusty and worn, slow and heavy, like maybe one of the gears fell out altogether and the others are having to compensate, but aren’t quite up to snuff. Like maybe the whole machine is about to go kaput.

The era of COVID-19 isn’t easy for anyone, so I’m not trying to say my mental distress is special. It’s not. I’m floundering in a completely foreign situation just like everyone around me is. Problem is, I’ve got people looking to me for help, too. I’m still a therapist, even if the world is upside down and inside out. Especially because the world is upside down and inside out.

It’s been a weird road, these past two weeks. The week leading up to Friday the 13^th of March, I was still in a state of heavy denial. The virus was just another flu. I was going to Jamaica on March 21, as planned for over a year. Over that week, I started the process of acknowledging and grieving what my losses were shaping up to be. And on Saturday the 14^th, I woke up and was like “waiiiit holy shit, hold the phone, what are you doing?” It was a strange experience, like all of these new and very real thoughts had infiltrated me and I couldn’t understand why they hadn’t been there all along. I accepted the reality and gravity of Coronavirus in a new way, and grasped my responsibility in flattening the curve. I cancelled my vacation. I got a telehealth platform set up for my practice. I emailed every client to tell them there would be changes in my service delivery. I created consent documentation and consulted consulted consulted. Between Saturday and Monday, I transformed my practice completely. It was exhausting, but exhilarating. I love learning, and I had to—and fast.

Fueled by caffeine, novelty, and optimism, I marched into last week. I saw twenty clients over telehealth, and the process went beautifully. No tech issues, and the whole videoconferencing thing felt a lot less interpersonally weird than I thought it might be. It felt empowering to be able to offer hope and guidance in bleak times. I ended the week with a sense of relief that I could still be a steady presence for my clients, put some good into the world, and also bring in some income for my family.

Enter this week. Now, I was supposed to be on vacation this week, so I opted to keep my caseload light. I scheduled nine people. I had hoped for a restorative week, filled with mostly reading and junk TV and personal stay-at-home projects. It has turned out to be a week of battling with insurance companies, intense client stress, and coming to grips with the mortality of my world. It has turned out to be a week of increasingly horrifying news, a week where I had conflict with family and friends about what “social distance” means in terms of how to enact it successfully, a week of fear and frustration and almost constant anger and anxiety. I’m trudging into Friday feeling like I’ve been steamrolled.

Today I held the sadness of a senior who will likely not celebrate the end of her high school career elbow-to-elbow with her friends. I held the desperation of a refugee who is running out of food with no apparent means of getting more, and whose children have fallen ill, possibly with Coronavirus. I held the anxiety of a pregnant mother who is unsure her partner will get to be in the delivery room with her when she labors. I witnessed the fear of my colleagues as we wonder if and how we will be reimbursed fairly for the important services we provide to others, in the age of telehealth, and I went to bat with and for them in the ways that I could.

Today I had my first panic attack in years.

Because the trauma of my clients is different than mine, but the same. I hold for them the very things I fear myself. Scarcity, financial ruin, loss, and death.

I assume tomorrow, if operating on a better night’s sleep, I will wake with a sunnier disposition. Optimism is my default, to the extent to which clients have described sessions with me as “hope infusions.”

But euthymic mood notwithstanding, I have no delusions of the next few weeks being easy. On me, on anyone. I think we’re in for some real shit, people.

And I guess until my funny bone kicks back in, I’m going to document it.