Yesterday I remembered how much I love a long, good, in-person conversation with a friend. This is definitely one of my top all-time favorite activities. I simultaneously realized how much I've been deprived of this the past couple months.
I thought I had everything I needed. I have a husband for companionship (also good to talk to), a cute cat, food, access to a walking trail nearby, and lots and lots of yarn. I even recently got set up so that I don't even have to go to the post office to ship crochet orders. Thanks to technology, I can resume my little side business and be quite productive without ever leaving my home. While some of my friends and family members have been visiting one another, braving the grocery stores, and a few even working in "the real world" out of necessity, I have been almost completely quarantined. I haven't even been inside a grocery for weeks, thanks to delivery and pick-up options. It's been a convenient excuse to totally succumb to my OCD (I have a long standing paranoia of viruses and germs) and remain cloistered-- this is the socially responsible thing to do, right?
I've been having a hard time even coming to terms with slowly resuming a degree of normalcy. I feel embarrassed to admit this, to be honest. The thoughts of grocery shopping or going to church, frankly, scare me. I'm not sure I have the energy or desire to express right now exactly what it's like to have OCD, but it's basically being held hostage and tortured by irrational worries....And I'd like to put an emphasis here on the "irrational." You can tell me I'll likely be fine, even if/when I catch the virus. You can tell me it's not as bad as I'm making it out to be and that I need to relax. You can tell me that while it's responsible to take certain precautions, I need to trust God. And you would be 100% correct and I'd agree with you-- I can even tell you more reasons I need to stop worrying. But the worries are irrational, i.e., they don't respond to reason. When I feel overcome with worry and fear, trying to calm me down by throwing rationale my way is like pelting a few ice cubes at a raging forest fire. Totally useless and irrelevant. You can even be meaner and call me a coward, and you might even be right about that too. But it's not going to "snap me out of it." When I truly feel the panic set in, I could care less about reason or about what anyone has to say. I just want to do anything and everything to feel safe.
But engaging in excessive hand-washing, constantly sanitizing groceries/packages, changing my clothes multiple times throughout the day ("because maybe they were infected when I went outside") and refusing to go anywhere to do anything doesn't actually make me safer, as one might suspect. To keep the fire metaphor going, engaging in ritualistic behavior to try to cure your OCD is like trying to put the raging forest fire out by dousing it in gasoline. It feels like such a nasty, even evil disorder-- when you do the things your brain says you have to in order to feel better, but you only feel more fear, more restriction, more isolation, and more despair. You try to make your life more manageable, but really your life just gets smaller and smaller.
But yesterday, I had a good, in-person conversation with a friend, and it helped my life regain a bit of its vigor back. It wasn't a planned conversation-- God probably knew I had to just sort of fall into it in order to take this first tiny baby step into learning what it's like to be a person again. She ordered a crocheted item and I actually just left it outside my front door for her to pick up (with the clarification that I'd love to see her but am still in a social distancing bubble). She called because she needed directions, and it felt stupid and rude to just try to direct her from inside my home while she was outside, trying to find it. So I went outside to meet her. And the conversation started from there. We hadn't talked in a very long time and we stayed for a couple hours catching up and rehashing all the craziness around us.
Even writing this feels so silly-- making such a big deal out of a casual, impromptu conversation. Such a mundane event. But to me, it felt like that nice ice cold glass of water I sometimes enjoy in the middle of the night when I wake up feeling parched. There were little voices in my head, telling me the longer I am outside talking to her, the greater the chance either of us are transmitting the virus if one of us happened to have it. Every time one of us laugh (which was frequent because we are just hilarious and witty individuals), a microscopic piece of spit is likely traveling in the air. We kept a reasonable distance, probably not quite 6 feet because that is just awkward when trying to have a conversation. We didn't wear masks because we were outside, not around anyone else (and we were both initially expecting this to be a quick transaction). Turns out, it's nice to actually see someone's face when you talk to them and it's also nice to breathe the fresh air. So yes, my OCD voices were begging me to end the conversation quickly so I could hide back inside and not worry that somehow, over the course of our meeting, I caught the dreaded virus. But fortunately, the common sense part of me won, the part of me that thought, "Wow. This is nice and you better not let your dumb OCD deprive you of this very basic and good thing that you need."
There's a lot of controversy about how to handle this pandemic, of course, and a lot of talk about what is and isn't essential. I see some people unafraid to speak their minds when they think things are getting unnecessarily restricted. But I think there is a silent, and pretty large group who also is questioning if we are letting fear (not reason) dictate our lives, but they are simply too afraid to speak up. There's always someone to "put them in their place," i.e., accuse them of not taking this virus seriously and selfishly not caring if people die. And as this is an extremely ugly accusation and none of us truly have the perfect knowledge to approach this thing in the exact right way, I get that it's easier sometimes to just keep your mouth shut.
And I don't know very much either. I've tried to stay mostly silent on the topic myself because this is a scary situation and I also don't have the right answer. I don't know what the perfect balance is between taking reasonable precautions while not allowing our society and livelihoods to be completely ruled by fear. But let me at least throw this perspective out there: up until this casual conversation with a friend, I have been-- for the past 9 weeks or so-- a shining model for living in quarantine and practicing pristine social distancing, and it has lead to increased anxiety, despair, fear, confusion, and isolation. Simply put, I believe going to the extreme of depriving yourself of anything that the government does not deem essential is a bad path for all of us. (And does that really surprise anyone?)
I am deeply bothered by the extreme rhetoric on the issue concerned with guilting people who crave normalcy and would like to take a few simple, small actions to somewhat regain it. On the internet, there is one circulating comic of the Titanic sinking and the people are whining about not being able to get haircuts and engaging in other complaints we might hear right now. Obviously the point is to shame people who would like society to at least somewhat resume, as they apparently seem completely unconcerned with the fact that people are dying. This is is just a lie and a totally unfair attack. Before I saw this, I actually did compare the situation to the Titanic in a previous blog post, but let's be clear-- this is far from a perfect analogy. If it was true that majority of the country's population was actual moments away from dying (as this comic suggests), then clearly we would have a very short list of what would be considered "essential." And this list certainly wouldn't include long, pleasant, casual conversations with friends. But this isn't what's happening. Most of us (who are lucky enough to have kept our jobs) are still working. We are still sleeping in our beds at night. We still have family and friends who are living nearby and we would like to know how they are doing. We still have chores and responsibilities to keep our households going. We still laugh and smile and relax sometimes, despite all the stress. We are still living, breathing, producing members of society. This pandemic is certainly a worldwide crisis, but it is obviously extremely unhealthy to be speaking, acting, and feeling as though we are all about to die. Especially as this crisis is going to drag out for months-- maybe longer-- holding onto this this level of panic is unsustainable and overall a terrible idea. Living our lives, day after day, intensely clinging to stress levels that are even remotely similar to what those on the Titanic were feeling moments before dying is-- quite clearly-- psychological suicide.
Each of us needs to evaluate what amount of individual risk we are willing to take, what our limits are, and what we consider essential to our livelihoods. Due to differing priorities and risk-levels, this definitely isn't going to look the same for every individual. I am well-aware that the elderly and sick are at a much higher risk right now, and that will mean they (and any family members regularly, closely interacting with them) might choose to have stricter limits than those who are younger and overall healthier. And yes, I agree that because of the nature of contagious viruses, we all should be mindful of the elderly and vulnerable around us (i.e., not going out when we are sick, regularly washing our hands, covering our mouths when we cough, etc.). But for the most part, I really do think these are individual choices we have to each evaluate in coordination with some close friends and family members. I also think some of us need to cool it on the rhetoric we use to shame people when they are making these decisions just because they might not perfectly match the decisions we make for ourselves.
It is not selfish to need an in-person conversation with a friend sometimes, even in the midst of this global crisis. For me, it was extremely "essential" to my mental and emotional well-being and I know now I need to make efforts in the future to keep up some degree of a social life (and not just through face time and texting because we all know that's not the same thing). For some people, it's essential to lie on the beach for an hour with a good book. Or to play frisbee in the park. Or to hold hands with a friend as you pray together. Or for a grandma to hold her new baby grandchild. Please, let's remember that these are some of the most basic beautiful human things that we need and we totally took for granted before the Age of Social Distancing. Quite suddenly, our right to participate in these things is greatly threatened and at the very least: severely scrutinized.
I agree life is precious and that we should defend and protect it. But why is life valuable? Is it our only true purpose in life to avoid illness at all costs and to keep our bodies safe? These days I feel we are so obsessed with mere survival that we sacrifice all the good parts of living without even a thought. If we collectively decide that for everyone, there are zero risks worth taking in life if it means one of us could catch this virus, that means living a very sad existence-- the same one I've been trapped in for several weeks now. While most people probably don't have OCD to provide extra torture, they might as well, if this is what we choose, because that would mean we choose fear over hope. It would mean we choose isolation over connection, mediocrity over beauty, and barren deserts over lush valleys, breathtaking mountains, and vast blue oceans.
I know things are confusing and overwhelming right now. I know it's easy just to jump on the bandwagon of extreme rhetoric and tell yourself you're only doing so because you care about people's lives. I know it's easy to use all-or-nothing thinking and to feel like you have to choose a side. These things are easy right now because life is so hard. We are all just desperate for a simple answer. But I beg you to ask yourself the tough questions. What is the purpose of your life and what aspects are you unwilling to compromise? What is an acceptable level of risk for you as an individual to take in order to experience some joy, emotional relief, peace, and connection? How can you protect and defend life while also allowing others some freedom to discern these choices for themselves? It's an honorable thing to care about saving lives, but it's also an honorable thing to defend our right to experiences that make life worth living.
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