Okay, so a pandemic and an anxiety disorder walk into a bar…

I’m among friends here, right? So can I just say that… Holy hell, the threat of covid does not play well with my anxiety disorder. Pandemic plus a natural tendency toward panic is a terrible combination. Are you feeling it, too? The exhaustion? The low-grade fear that’s a constant hum in the background? The worry that you’re making too much of it followed by the worry that, three years in, we’re minimizing it WAY too much?

I lean hypochondriac in the best of times. I knew this about myself long before covid. When my father was fifty, he went to work one day and had a heart attack there and died. Just like that. Okay, not quite just like that. There were the terrible three weeks when he was in a coma, on life support. It was sudden and then dragged out. But the point is that it came out of nowhere. He woke up, put on a suit, drove to work, didn’t feel so well and called my mom to say he was coming home early, and then he was gone.

I was nineteen years old when he died. My anxiety, predictably, takes the physical form of feeling like I’m having a heart attack, and regardless of what I think I’m worried about in the moment, the thing that feeds the anxiety is a fear of death.

I am so afraid to die. I don’t want to die because I want more life, and I don’t want to die because my father’s death fucked me up and I don’t want my kids to be fucked up by my death.

And so along comes covid, right? I’ll spare you describing the rollercoaster of those first months of so many deaths and no vaccines, and then thinking we were saved by the vaccines and then the variants that showed we weren’t out of the woods by a long shot etc. You lived it, too. You know.

I’m still masking indoors. I’m fully vaxxed and boosted. I do what I can. But I have two kids in school, and with mask mandates out the window our family is exposed regardless of the precautions we take personally. I can’t fully control my exposure, because I can’t control the people around me. Anxiety loves the shit we can’t control, right? Such rich material there, the threats we can’t do a damn thing about.

And even when we can control our exposure, it’s imperfect. And then sometimes, we let go of even what we can control and take a chance. Sometimes we get away with it, sometimes it bites us in the ass.

This past June I went to Spain, my first time back since November 2019. I needed to go to do research for the novel I was finishing up, but even without the novel as an excuse I would have found a reason to go. It had been a long two years of pandemic, and Madrid is the city of my heart, and I just… I just really wanted to be there. I didn’t want to live a life where it wasn’t safe to go back to Spain. When I booked the flights the mask mandate for planes was still in place, which made my decision to go easier. Covid seemed to be on the wane. It felt like a reasonable risk. Maybe it was. Shortly before my trip, the mask mandate was struck down. But covid cases were still on the wane (we thought). It still felt like a reasonable risk. (And maybe it was.) I went.

Almost no one but me was masked at PDX, or on the flight from PDX to Newark. Almost no one but me was masked at Newark airport, where I had a seven-hour layover. On the flight from Newark to Madrid, the Spaniards and I were masked. The Americans, not so much. But okay. I was masked, right? So I was doing what I could…sort of? It was a twenty-hour travel day. I took down my mask to eat and drink. If I could do it over again, I would have fasted the whole way.

You know where this is going, right? We thought covid was on the wane because you can’t see the beginning of a surge until you’re in it. I had a wonderful first three days of my two-week trip, then started to feel sick the evening of the third day. I tested positive the next morning. Luckily the friends I’d been with just before my symptoms started remained negative.

So there I was, isolating, only able to enjoy as much of my favorite city on earth as I could see from my balcony. I was pretty sick for the first three days, and it was scary to be that sick and be totally alone. No one there to notice if I didn’t wake up. That sort of thing. (See above about my anxiety.)

I survived (obviously). I tested negative on day nine, the day before I was originally scheduled to fly home, but thanks to my husband’s flexibility and the kindness of a United rep who did some sort of magic that made fees go away, I was able to extend the trip by six days so I could get the research done that I needed to. And I did manage to get that research done, including schlepping from synagogue to synagogue to cathedral in Toledo in 97-degree heat, but it didn’t feel good. I got tired easily. Like, hit-by-a-truck tired. I was short of breath often. I dragged myself through those six extra days, got a doctor’s clearance to fly (because of the trouble breathing, I wanted to be sure), and made the 20-hour return trip home, yawning most of the way because it was the only way I could take full, deep breaths on the plane.

If covid was just like a cold for you, cool. Lucky you. It kicked my ass, and I didn’t feel like I was entirely back to myself until a full six weeks after that positive test. I never want to feel that way again, and I’m also scared about what unseen damage might have been done, and what reinfection might mean for long-term health and for the risk of…you know…dropping dead suddenly of a heart attack.

Last month, my son caught covid. Thanks to an air purifier going full blast in his room, and two-way masking anytime we brought him food etc, the rest of us managed not to catch it. This is even with having to share a bathroom, so take heart if you’re in this position. (As of this writing, as far as we know, my husband and daughter still have never had it. Fingers crossed. Pooh pooh pooh. Knock wood. All of that.) That’s a victory, yeah? That covid was in the house and we kept it from spreading? Yes. But oof, my friends… My anxiety pinged super high that week that he was positive, and has continued to since then, because of the hypervigilance triggered by knowing for sure that it was in the house and needing to be super on top of protocols to make sure it didn’t spread.

When it was over and my son was back out in the world and I could, in theory, relax, I started having heart palpitations. I went to the doctor, had an ecg, which looked normal and was identical to one I had last year, but because of my family history, and because I’ve had covid, my doctor decided to prescribe a heart monitor, just to be safe. I have an appointment to get the results on Wednesday. It’s probably anxiety. I hope it’s anxiety. What if it’s not? Well, that’s why I’m getting checked out, right? I’m on top of it. I’m doing what I can, including taking a baby aspirin a day just in case covid left me with some wee little blood clots. I’m doing what I can. But the anxiety! Holy crap, the anxiety.

I want what we all want. I want to know that I’m safe, that my family is safe, that you’re safe. I want this virus to be neutralized. I want it to be true when people say that it isn’t a concern anymore. But for now, that’s just a lie, or wishful thinking. It is a concern. It is a threat. And I am so tired.

Anyway… Hi. I hope you’re doing okay. I hope we all get through this, as well as all of the other shit we need to get through. There is so very much shit that we need to get through. I’m sending you all love from my little corner of the besieged world.