Coronation

So, I’m 99% sure that I have the dreaded Covid 19. A week ago today, (Sunday 3/22/20), I woke up feeling sick with a fever. Not terribly sick, just yucky. My sponsor turned alarmist and overreacted so badly that I really had to measure my words when drafting my text responses to the succession of orders she barked at me. I did as she asked, to what I felt was a reasonable point, and then gently drew my line in the sand and thanked her for loving me so much. I was scheduled to work a full shift the following day, so I texted my boss to let her know I wouldn’t be there.

At that point I didn’t really know if I had the dreaded plague or just some run-of-the-mill bug, but I secretly hoped that this was it. My philosophy all along has been that the best defense is to develop antibodies the old fashioned way. If it killed me, I would accept my fate without resistance. I have no problem complying with the timeline I’ve been allotted. I had (still have) a feeling that this isn’t how I will meet my end, so I wasn’t worried. The data was still meager but it wasn’t claiming lives at a civilization-ending rate and my symptoms were quite mild compared to other sicks I’ve suffered. Nevertheless, it had become obvious to me well before then that this was a case of closing the barn door after the horses already got out. It was impossible to know just how many of us had been infected and it was likely it was more than anyone cared to admit. It was naïve to assume any of us hadn’t already been exposed weeks before anyone suggested social distancing, and after all, this was the main virus that was “going around.”       

That night my sleep wasn’t great. I was sweaty and achy, as one expects when sick with a flu. The following day I “met” with my GP via remote video, as my sponsor had demanded. He told me I didn’t have it. Quelle surprise. I had just bought a bunch of oranges a few days prior, and I set about devouring their sweet juicy sunshine with regularity. I had some Echinacea and elderberry tea with raw honey here and there, and I rested. I prepared myself for the possibility of it getting far worse, but it didn’t. The fever only lasted 24 hours and I had developed some minor nasal congestion, but it didn’t stop up my nostrils and I wasn’t coughing or sneezing at all. I was 100% honest about my status when my boss checked to see if I’d be in that Wednesday, and she told me I was welcome to return as scheduled. And I did. And then I worked another 6 hours on Friday.

I started to question my initial suspicion regarding the big bug. Other than a fever, which was short-lived, I didn’t have any of the coughing or chest congestion that was reported to be so severe for so many. I was tired, yes, but when wasn’t I tired? It was easy to rest with the whole world on hold, so I slept and watched TV and didn’t do much of anything. The cats seemed to enjoy using me as furniture. I spent ridiculous amounts of time window shopping online, flagging my favorites and waiting for the economy to tank so I could scoop them up super cheap. I was sick with whatever this may be, so I just needed to be good to myself and let my body do its thing.

Then I discovered a new symptom. On my way to work that morning, as is so often my custom, I stopped at McDonald's and grabbed some breakfast on my way downtown. I frowned when I bit into the hash browns because they weren’t as tasty as they usually are. Oh well. Cheap food. I forgot all about it. It wasn’t until later that evening while eating lemon pepper chicken with mashed potatoes that I realized I couldn’t taste anything. Son of a bitch. This new symptom had just shown up in the news, but I didn’t think much of it because there was (is) so much misinformation that it a lot of it just isn’t credible. I had been regularly checking the news in France and Spain to compare it against what we were hearing here, and while many things took a good long time to cross the ocean for American ears, this wasn’t one of them. I decided it had to be my swollen nasal passages, so I ate rice and egg noodles and scrambled eggs, and I drank lots of ice water, saving the good stuff for the day I could enjoy it. I noted that, even though I couldn’t actually taste anything, I could still somehow detect salt and sugar and stale mouth due to teeth that need brushing. I tried snorting and blowing every which way to clean out my nasal passages enough to maybe just barely taste a little hint of something, but no luck. My oranges had lost their appeal. (a-peel, lol?) But I continued to keep calm and just take it easy. I watched and I waited.  

There’s more. Diarrhea, previously an occasional but not uncommon annoyance of my everyday life, has now become persistent. It’s been going on for at least 4 days now. Is it my diet? Is it the virus? Something else? I’m not running for the bathroom or anything, but just when I woke up this morning it had turned yellow and this afternoon I had some light abdominal cramping. It’s a little unnerving.

So I don’t know, I think I probably do indeed have *it* but that doesn’t change anything. The tests are still too scarce to waste on a nobody like me and there’s no proven treatment available yet. I feel a little guilty for having gone to work but the doctor cleared me and I can’t expect them to let me skip shifts on suspicion. Besides, like I said before, I think a lot of us have already been exposed. I do worry about infecting my parents if I go for an Easter visit. I’m sure if anyone is still safe it’s those folks down in Mayberry. I’ll keep resting and observing until then. I just had some more tea and I’ve got a perpetual cup of ice water within reach. If I die, please look after the cats.   

Finding a purpose

Standing at the sink this morning washing dishes I replayed a couple of memories from early childhood. There was one Sunday at church with grandma when they did a rare children’s segment down front for everyone to observe. A dozen or so of us wee ones assembled there, and we were asked to think about what we would like to be when we grew up. The woman leading the exercise held up a series of small, hand-written signs listing various professions, one by one, and each child was asked to step up and claim their preference as it was revealed. Miraculously there were no hiccups and each of the children accepted a job without question or competition just as naturally as if the signs had read their names. I remember being acutely aware that we were quite literally on stage, under close observation by a sea of adults whose silence did nothing to deaden the weight of their audience. I didn’t feel particularly drawn to any of the cards she held up, so I just waited obediently and let the others take their turn until I was the only one left. Being the only remaining unemployed participant brought an additional level of conspicuousness, and I remember the palpable anticipation of what that last card might say. Somewhere deep down I hoped that it said something that fit me as perfectly as the previous cards seemed to fit the other kids, some definitive purpose that had never occurred to me before, as if it might lend the kind of security that comes with certainty about one’s place in the world. When she finally held it up for us all to see, it read “home maker.” All of my built up anticipation was deflated like a balloon. Here was the furthest thing from confirmation, left to the last like scraps on a plate, but this was no time to let them see me sweat. Everyone was watching and the show must go on. The demonstration was over and people had lost interest so I accepted my designated job – hardly considered a real job in those days – and we all went back to our regularly scheduled lives. While I can hypothesize now, I’ve no real memory of what the spiritual lesson was intended to be.

What I do remember is how this was just one of countless repeated experiences when I was aware of far more than I had words to express. Not only did I know things, but I also doubted that anybody else knew these things and there was no way that I could make them hear me even with the eloquence of a poet. Even before I developed the necessary vocabulary I understood that nobody, least of all adults, (at best they were too entertained by my maturity to hear my message and at worst they dismissed me as an insignificant child not worth hearing out), could comprehend my brand of reality. The frustration I felt with this inarguable truth was overwhelming. Early on I learned to adopt a self-imposed mutism to avoid the aggravation that inevitably came with any effort to communicate.  

The most discouraging thing about my predicament was neither the annoyingly persistent evidence of my inherent difference from everyone else nor the inability to be understood; it was the lack of any additional information which might shed light on how or why any of this was meaningful. I’ve always been OK with different. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t different. Not much point in lamenting what I was made to be. The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be any place to accommodate my differentness. Even in our present time of celebrating diversity, I still haven’t found a “job” that fits me. If different is what I was made to be, what on earth was I made to do?

It is common practice to ask children what they want to be when they grow up. We regularly tell our youth that they can do anything they set their minds to. What a beautiful liberty to have a society where you aren’t arbitrarily limited by the circumstances into which you are born and have no hope to change. I know, I know, this isn’t as true as we’d like it to be once we scratch the surface of it, but it’s a hell of an improvement compared to where we’ve been in the past. The first thing I remember reporting in response to this question was that I wanted to be a writer. I didn’t arrive at this decision as early as some. In early childhood, as it was that Sunday morning in church, I hadn’t the foggiest idea what I wanted to be. None of the options I’d been presented with felt right, so I just muddled along waiting for my glass slipper to appear.

I think it was about 4^th grade when I settled on writer. One of the enrichment perks of my gifted and talented program included a regular push-in from a content-specific teacher to focus exclusively on creative writing. She was a strikingly beautiful woman with curly blonde hair and a ski jump nose. I didn’t really like her but I took to the whole writing thing like a fish to water. Here was something that felt so genuinely natural that I couldn’t understand the need for formal instruction, and it came so effortlessly that I soon wrote spontaneously the way an artist paints or a bird lays an egg. Others seemed to find me so oddly talented that they came away a bit bewildered by how and what I produced. I remember noting how easily impressed they were with what I felt was mediocre work. But then again, when did I ever share popular opinion?

I abandoned the idea of being a writer not long after I had discovered it. At the time I didn’t see much likelihood of earning a living that way. At that time I had a very limited view of career options and I was far too young for anyone to think about counseling me on my options. The only successful writers I saw were those authors who were fortunate enough to have their books chosen for publication, and the chances of that were too slim for me to build a future on. I mean, how could I possibly expect that anything I wrote would prove attractive enough to be financed by some big publisher when nobody up to that point had ever taken anything I had to say for free? No, that was too much uncertainty for a little worm on a big hook like me. I abandoned writing as a frivolous waste of time and saved my energy for a more promising career path to present itself. Soon enough I felt pressured to choose something while there was still sufficient time to master it. It was in this manner that my education and consequent vocation played out, not so much a reflection of my heart’s desire but a process of elimination to arrive at the safest possible bet.  

A crisis of faith

It’s just a feeling.

I’ve heard this line on countless occasions, rattled off like a proven panacea by well-meaning people who have found it sufficient to comfort them in trying times. But since I appear to be of a different evolutionary track from the rest of you modern humans, why on earth would this simple little explanation satisfy my unceasing ruminations?    

I think I have always believed that there is something out there, bigger than all of this mess, a power beyond anything mere humans can conceive. Sure, the particulars of my working theory have changed over time, evolving with me through the seasons of my life, but even when it felt cold and indifferent, that something still existed.

I have tried to remain as open-minded as I can be about the proverbial big picture.

And I have wholeheartedly acknowledged that all too often we plod along for what feels like eternity before that watershed moment when it all finally makes sense, when those seemingly random pieces come together and the higher order is revealed. We laugh and shake our heads at how foolish we were for either not seeing it all along or for ever having doubted there was a grand plan in the first place. We never know how long it will take and we don’t usually have much control over the way it all goes down, yet we persist in our belief because it brings order to the chaos. We desperately need to have that light at the end of the tunnel to make the bitterness of life palatable. We have patience because we have faith and we have faith because it keeps us sane. 

Up until recently, my master theory went like this: If I am suffering, then…

     a)    there is something amiss and I need to make a change to alleviate the suffering.

     (or)

     b)   there is some value in the experience of suffering and I must feel it because the only way over it is through it.

I guess I’ve been a little bit Serenity Prayer and a little bit Hanged Man. In either scenario, I have reasoned, suicide would be pointless. He who does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it. There are no shortcuts in my theory, so whatever comes next will surely include the same unresolved issues (in whatever form they may present themselves) that I intended to leave behind when I ducked out on them in this life. There are seldom accidents. Never say never.

My body is matter. When I die, those elements that comprised the whole of me will be tossed back into the cauldron and stirred around with the rest of the soup to eventually reemerge, synthesized as other things. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, as it were. There is nothing individual or unique about my physical manifestation, parts is parts and I’m totally OK with that. However, if my feelings are nothing more than a function of this physical vessel, an equally inconsequential collection of raw materials with no meaning beyond my immediate perception, what’s left? How can I have a soul without love? How can this mysterious life force that animates me - this unexplained miracle that makes my heart beat out of passion as well as fear – not matter? Npi.   

So, if you’re going to reduce feelings to nothing more than a chemical released in the brain - minimize them as simple mechanical responses - then how does anything have any meaning whatsoever? If my guilt about harming others and my joy about helping others are just feelings, if my moral compass points to nowhere, why shouldn’t I rape and pillage my way through life? Take what I can when I can, kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out. I mean, if you take away the significance of feelings, the whole freaking structure of civilization falls apart. That reasoning has offended me every time I’ve heard it. So I silently scoffed and rejected on the inside, acquiescing and feigning relief on the outside as the easiest response. Just another reminder of how I’m impossibly different. Nothing to see here folks, move along. But now I’m beginning to wonder if this wasn’t contempt prior to investigation. It is only in the last day or so that I have honestly considered embracing utter nothingness as a valid and feasible possibility, and it kind of scares the living shit out of me.

But that’s exactly where I am now. I have doubts. What if there really is no man behind the curtain? What if the hokey pokey really is what it’s all about? We humans have a bad habit of making ourselves out to be far more essential than we actually are. Once upon a time we accepted as a natural and undeniable fact that we were the literal center of the universe. If we continue to chip away at that faulty notion of having some special significance, we will eventually cut ourselves right out of the picture. Maybe that’s for good reason. Maybe the truth really ends with that most logical and likely of conclusions. There’s nothing special whatsoever about any of this. Life’s a bitch and then you die.

If that’s the case, wtf am I even bothering for? I may as well just throw in the towel and call it a day. Why prolong pointless suffering? If I’m being completely honest, (when am I ever not lol), my checking out wouldn’t really leave that big of a void. Aside from my pets, my parents, and a few close friends, my absence wouldn’t leave that much of a ripple. I’m just not that important. I’ve never been much of a gambler. Experience has proven that my luck sucks. So why am I holding out for that unlikely long shot that maybe there’s a reason after all, when it makes so little sense under the microscope? That magical scenario of happily ever after is seeming less and less probable.    

I used to be the Queen of Swords personified. Negative, critical, cold, uncompromising, black or white, the glass is half empty and evaporating fast - it will undoubtedly be empty soon, just watch the level falling as we speak. It took a good long while for me to become aware of it and the ways it was holding me back, and I have worked long and hard to retrain my thinking and adopt a sunnier attitude. Fake it til you make it, like attracts like, smile for a change and you’ll automatically feel happier. I’ve made decent progress, but when the scale wobbles I still tend to lean in the wrong direction. Yesterday at work I observed this tendency leap out of me like a wolf shedding his sheep disguise and I looked over at DD to say how I hate that about myself. Maybe it’s a phase and I’ll come back around. Misery really sucks.

Symptoms revisited

I really didn’t think I was going to make it to work today. I went to bed at 22:30, but the itching and swallowing and whatnot had me in such a state that none of the cats even bothered to follow me in to bed. Tossing around in frustration I imagined a gang of tiny invisible faeries poking at me and laughing at my exasperation. The last time I remember looking at the clock it was 23:30. Rising and shining was out of the question when the alarm went off at 8:00, so I moved to the couch and set another alarm for 9:00. After hitting snooze several times I eventually forced myself up at 9:45. I fed the cats, washed my face, and brushed my hair but concluded that it was a hair-up kind of a day. I scrambled around to find the most recent (sic cleanest) clothes I had discarded about the house – yeah, all the laundry is still in the basement – and sat down at my vanity to pick myself ready. I’m trying to be quick, but oh how stupid can I be getting drawn back in over and over with just one more little spot over here. The clock is behind me, beaming a toxic anxiety ray through the back of my head and into my brain with those big ugly arbitrary green numbers. I can already hear the uncertainty in my supervisor’s response as I struggle to put it into words that might make some sense to another person.    

How am I going to get out of this one? My battery is dead, I can’t make it today. Yes, I’ve already called and I’m waiting on the truck. God, I just want to go back to sleep. Am I going to lose my job? Would it be more honorable to just resign now, before I ruin my reputation as a reliable employee? I can’t even manage one 4 hour shift a week? Has it really come to this? OK, I’m making myself move. I just have to push myself harder. It will be OK once I get moving. I can be 10 minutes late if I call from the car, right? God I don’t know how I’m ever going to do this. My crazy is sticking out in too many places right now. Maybe today will be the day that it comes out so undeniably obnoxious and uncontrollable that I make a real mess of things.

I chatted with Gus about the insanity of it all during the staff meeting. I was feeling super insecure about doing it, but the subject came up so I swallowed back my reluctance and shared a few of my irrationalities because I knew he would benefit from hearing the vulnerable testimony of a fellow OCD sufferer. Yeah, sometimes I’m codependent like that. We each do our own crazy shit to exert control over the meaningless things that we’ve convinced ourselves are essential. I only wish my crazy shit was more simple and straightforward like his.

I almost forgot just how crazy I am until he said that he couldn’t see the rash around my mouth. Well, no, of course not, nobody else can see these things like me. Just like that shameful scar on my face that I walked around sporting like an extra limb throughout my entire youth. That scar that nobody else ever even noticed. I know it. Sometimes I can pass by a mirror and glance over at myself quickly enough that my eyes miss the dozens of tiny imperfections that scream hateful demeaning things at me when I’m at home all alone with my tweezers. I have to be quick and it doesn’t always work, but sometimes I can take a step back and see the forest for the trees. I know I’m crazy that way, but at least I am aware of it.

  

I can remember first learning of the phenomenon we now know as body dysmorphia in the context of Karen Carpenter’s death, and wondering if it was like looking into a warped mirror that distorted her image into a larger version of herself. How else could you explain an otherwise lovely and talented young woman starving herself to emaciation? Turns out, if she was anything like me, it’s not so simple as a vision problem. She didn’t perceive herself as any fatter than she actually was, rather it was an error in judgment that had nothing whatsoever to do with the blatant reality of size. Her identical weight and build would have struck her as sickening on any other body, but somehow she was *different* from everyone else. The same rules didn’t apply to her; there were extenuating circumstances. While the literal image she saw with her eyes was identical to what everyone else saw in the mirror, it simply was not *good enough* to compensate for the ugly unlovable parts that only she could see, larger than life, announcing to the world her despicableness, compelling her to punish herself into conformity with whatever version of acceptable she could *control*. The devil is always in the details. It’s like looking at old footage of a successful youth enrichment program showing happy, bright-faced children wearing clean crisp uniforms, blissfully singing and dancing together out in fresh air, enjoying all of the benefits that their community could possibly provide. It looks idyllic if you don’t understand the significance of the crooked cross down in the corner of the screen, in which case your impression changes from delight to horror in an instant.          

During my shift I printed out some training materials on PTSD that caught my eye. Reading it over tonight I learned about complex trauma. Altered self-perception? Check. Guilt and shame? Check. Critical inner voice? Check. Self-destructive behavior? Check. Difficulty trusting? Check. Trouble managing emotions? Check. On and on it goes. “Self-soothing” really stood out to me. I had difficulty identifying ways that I know how to do this effectively. I also began to think about just how much I dissociate. I was rather alarmed when I did a quick self-appraisal. Great, another horrifying label that doesn’t help a lick. More tears, no more answers.

Instead of crying about it, I sat down to update my health spreadsheet. There were a few pills I stopped taking, and I added a category I’m calling “other symptoms” which lists problems that are not currently being formally treated by doctors or with pharmaceuticals. So far I only have three: Photosensitivity, chronic headaches, chronic back pain. Not sure how significant they are, but I do like to be thorough. And then I got comfy at my disaster of a desk and repeatedly pushed my cat away so I could write this. It’s going on 22:00 so maybe my broken brain will let me go to sleep. I’m meeting with a care manager for the first time tomorrow in hopes of getting access to services that could help me. Should be interesting.