Content Warning: This post will touch upon self-harm, suicide, and substance use.
NOTE: I’m writing this while up late, with a headache and feeling physically not great while coming down off a panic attack. I’ve not done much in the way of editing, and so this will be a bit rambly and I’m pretty sure I change from first person to second person multiple times so…
Also! If you read this & know me, and feel like I’m maybe talking about you as I recount things— there’s a chance that’s true but I hope you don’t take it as me saying ‘fuck you’ or ‘I hate you’ and understand it more as a ‘I value you, but i don’t think you value me and I wish that wasn’t true and I just want you to prove me wrong’. I also wanna acknowledge a few people have actually gone above and beyond in supporting me during this pandemic and they’re great and I cherish the direct action they’ve taken in showing me they care.
I’ve been grateful to be in mostly good physical shape and health since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even after taking a high-risk trip across the country, I’ve been sheltered from the immediate impact of this devastating virus.
What I haven’t been very grateful for is the emotional toll of this pandemic. Among other things, I deal with some severe depression issues, I’ve got a form of OCD, I deal with insomnia from time to time (on top of another, physical sleep disorder). I’ve stayed a float (well, barely and we’ll touch on that next) by maintaining some order and routine in my life, namely
- Daily exercise — functional body weight training, VR workouts, running, walking, etc.
- Journaling — Much like this post, writing down my issues and experiences
- Therapy — Talking to a professional
- Mindfulness- Flawed as it is, its a helpful tool in the toolkit
But. Even before this pandemic hit even with other elements in the routine (heading to work, grabbing Starbucks each morning, blah blah blah), I felt very alone and isolated.
I felt like the people in my immediate vicinity think of me as an afterthought — I often feel excluded and forgotten. It’s a weird cycle I’ve struggled with for the past few years now — this fear of reaching out to people because they won’t engage with me, and then not doing so perhaps causing the few people I do interact with to do just that, and then my attempts to course-correct (reaching out to said people, asking them to do things, etc) not working and me just hating myself and feeling hurt by those people. Even when I’m around people, I feel ignored… like a prop in the background. It’s excruciatingly painful. I’ve gotten to a point where… I don’t even know what to say to a lot of people anymore. I just live in this negative, sad feedback loop.
I was feeling all this in a time where it was safe to go out, to be around people, to be in an office all day.
Now imagine those feelings when you’re physically unable to do a lot of this stuff. When, as someone who doesn’t own a car, most modes of transportation are a risk in of themselves. Sure, Zoom chats and stuff happened at first. But then they faded. And then some people started doing small get-togethers. So, eventually then you try seeing if people want to hang out. People who say ‘they do like you’, people who say they are your ‘friends’. But what you get is either… crickets, people bailing on you in disingenuous ways, or just constant ‘ i cant’s with no attempt of even pretending to offer other possible chances to hangout. It’s mentally exhausting. You’re left alone with your thoughts, and a lot of those thoughts just make you feel bad. Bad about yourself. About those around you.
You try calling some people out on this behavior and how it impacts you. That doesn’t work. So what do… what do you do?
Let’s remove the “you” here — I’m talking about myself. For me, it ended up being taking a big risk. Flying across the country to visit a place where people I knew cared about me and would make time for me lived. I flew across the country. On a vacation. In a fucking pandemic. Not everyone is comfortable taking that kind of risk to alleviate their mental health, and not everyone can take that risk.
The vacation was nice — it did alleviate the loneliness and the crippling depression I was feeling. I felt like myself. Briefly. I was super grateful for those people I saw and the time I spent with them. But then I got home. And I crashed. Immediately. It backfired. Ya see, not only is a trip like this a high-risk thing… it’s not a sustainable thing. It doesn’t actually solve the problem. At least it didn’t for me — it just… reminded me of something I feel like I can’t have most of the time.
Now, this is a lot of ‘woe is me’. And honestly, I kinda need to do it. Because I need to acknowledge these are feeling I’m experiencing. And I need to write it down. And I kinda need to air it out for others to see. Why? Because maybe, they read it and they realize… they’re not doing right by someone in their life. And I’m probably guilty of this too.
Which brings me to the real meat of this. My own misery in this pandemic aside, and my own fears of what might happen after a longer period of it, I do feel like we’re not talking enough about the personal, emotional cost this pandemic is taking.
People are social animals. Even introverts. Generally, we need to be around others, we need to be held… we need physical interaction to feel good and to thrive. If you live on your own in a time where you shouldn’t be close to people, especially strangers experiencing any of this is going to be hard. If you don’t have a social support structure in place on top of that, you’re going to feel worse. I know I’m not alone in experiencing this.
I’m falling apart at the seams. I know I’m not alone. But I just feel like, when I hear about COVID-19… I’m hearing about the macro. The death tolls, the ineptitude of the US government (both federal and state) to get our houses in order. This is all important shit that we do need to talk about… but what about the micro? What is the impact on suicide rate? What are people who are driven to abuse substances as a means of coping to do if they’re isolated and nobody’s actually… aware of what’s happening to them? What if somebody’s self-harming? How do identify this stuff remotely and how do we get them the proper help without exposing them to a plague?
This shit keeps me up at night — because I’ve lived it. I’ve been hospitalized three times in my life, once as a teenager for overdosing in a suicide attempt, another for collapsing under my depression and never-ending panic attacks, and one more time after that. The American psychiatric health system is flawed in normal times (a story for another time), and not everyone could afford to go MacLean Hospital in the before times, let alone in this current state of affairs. Time in these facilities is spent in small rooms, talking in group sessions, spending 1:1 time with counselors. You’re meant to be watched. I just… I can’t grasp how it can be safely handled at a tangible scale. But I can’t grasp how many others are suffering and who need this kind of help.
How do we help people dealing with these issues like myself? There’s the cost issue, the actual issue of … putting people in distress in a hospital with others. How does a pandemic impact all of this?
I truly believe that one way is for us all to make more an effort. It’s not perfect. It won’t fix everything. Heaven knows somebody who should be on suicide watch can’t simply just get a text and now be fine — but we can maybe, by caring for others and actively reaching out — maybe we can stop someone from getting that far. Message people. Ask how they’re doing. Try to do a 1:1 zoom call or something, or an in-person thing where comfortable. Show you care. Especially if somebody (like me!) has explicitly stated they need this.
Don’t be a bystander, and assume somebody else has reached out. Make the effort. You’ll help that person, you’ll probably feel better about yourself. Put yourself in that person’s shoes. Just fucking try. And don’t pay lip service. Actually put in the effort. It could mean the difference between life and death for someone.
