TOTW70 – Observations from Quarantine

This month’s Theme of the Week is: What has being under quarantine changed about how you see yourself or other people?

Quarantine is nothing new to me.  My life has been pretty quarantined since December 11, 2017, when I began a three week nap.  I hadn’t taken my immune deficiency disorder seriously, and was not having my infusions.  I came down with encephalitis, which led to a series of mini-strokes, and now, I am considered permanently disabled.

So I’m used to being at home.  Since Drew often travels for work, I can be home all alone for several days at a time.

I’m used to only communicating with friends and family via Facebook, because I’d only made a few friends here in North Carolina before I got sick, and most of them were my work-mates at the shop where I was bookkeeper.  Video chat is a regular part of my life.  Every Friday with Adina, every Sunday with Theresa, and every second Monday with Talib.  I’ve even been tutoring my nieces and nephews through online apps, and long before I got sick, I actually had a job teaching algebra on television for the San Juan Distance Learning Project, which was adult education.

If this quarantine has changed anything about the way I see anyone, it’s the way I perceive my anxiety disorder.  Around the time of my 16th birthday, I began having crippling panic attacks.  When they hit, I just wanted to lay down and curl up in a ball.  I would cry and sweat, and I’d work myself into such a frenzy that I’d occasionally vomit.

My anxiety was brought on by the incessant warning from my religious community that the Rapture was coming and the world as we know it would be ending.  I wouldn’t learn it until years later, but my parents were doing and selling meth at the time, so that created absolute chaos in our home.

In those days, anxiety really wasn’t something that was discussed casually, as it is today.  I had no idea what I was going through.  I thought I was going crazy.  It wasn’t until I watched an episode of Oprah about panic attacks that I even had a word for what I was experiencing.

I got past so much of that anxiety when I gave up religion as I understood it.  But it was much later in my life, my mid-30’s when I realized that I actually had a clinical issue.  Meds and years of counseling have given me the ability to manage my anxiety much better than I had before.  But I have had certain triggers.  The move out here was a huge change for me.  I had gone from a very large network of friends and family, to only knowing Drew.  I found myself in the midst of those panic attacks again.

So I guess this quarantine has just confirmed something I had already suspected – WE!  Drew and I, are bad ass and totally belong together!

I had a bit of anxiety when we couldn’t find the food we wanted.  But I got over it quickly. Drew comforts me when I’m anxious, and I help him when he’s feeling off.

Drew has been a bit of a “prepper” for as long as I’ve known him.  We have huge bags of flour, rice, beans, and lots of canned food stored away.  We never get down to fewer than 12 rolls of toilet paper before he’s buying a new case.  We have cases of dog food and cat food, all stored away.  Today, aside from meat, we got most of what we ordered from the grocery store.

So this quarantine has given me perspective, and I’m grateful for it.