You’d have to be living in a cave in some remote spot not to
know that we’re in the midst of a worldwide pandemic. There’s really no other
news on TV, or my Facebook newsfeed for that matter – except the deliberate
light relief kind, like cat videos or music
from European balconies.
I’ve felt a wide range of emotions in response to this. A
ton of sad ones - compassion for those who are or have been sick, grief for
those who have died, and empathy for those who have lost loved ones. Empathy
also for those who know that they or their loved ones are at risk, those who
are struggling to cope, those whose anxiety is going through the roof, those
who find the whole thing just too overwhelming. I’ve sometimes found myself
sitting on the couch crying, for instance when my country experienced its first
Covid#19 death. I didn’t know the person, or anyone who’s died anywhere, but I
cried anyway.
And anger. I’m furious at the hoarders and panic buyers who’ve
emptied the supermarket shelves, depriving those of us who can’t afford to do
this of things we need. Seriously? Who needs three hundred toilet rolls anyway?
I’m especially angry though at the profiteers.
How dare you. How dare you make money on the backs of people’s pain, misery and
deaths. What kind of amoral pipsqueak are you? And then there are the callous
and the don’t-care-I’m-all-right-Jack
crowd, who put everyone else at risk. This is not a time for partying,
people!
I’m also angry at those so-called
leaders who haven’t
acted fast enough, and have put more people’s lives at risk as a result. My
(admittedly rough) impression is that ‘left-wing’ governments, at least in
Western countries, seem to be acting faster and doing more to help ordinary
people, whereas right-wing leaders have tried to delay acting, or even reverse
some actions too soon, in order to minimise damage to the Holy Grail of
‘The Economy’. The inadequate measures of some governments sometimes seem akin
to telling the Titanic’s orchestra to play on as the boat is sinking. I’ve
wanted to grab them all by their collars and shake some sense into them.
But my strongest feeling is simply fear. It’s not myself I
fear for, but relatives and friends, especially those who are in the ‘high
risk’ category. Will they get sick? Will anyone I know die? I fear for my loved
ones, especially a close relative who is pregnant with a much-wanted and
longed-for baby, as well as my more elderly relatives. Plus no-one knows how
long this pandemic will last, will it be over in a few months, or by Christmas?
Will we acquire herd immunity, or will the virus mutate again? Will there be
further pandemics? When will there be a vaccine? How much should I be
scared?
Because nobody knows what the future will hold, even if we beat
this thing. Maybe the world will only change in small ways – elbow bumping
replacing high-fives, or a shift to more people working at home. Everyone
becoming more scrupulous about washing hands. (I can’t help wondering what you were
all doing before?!?) Or maybe we’ll become a more scared world, like we did
after 9/11, with ‘viral’ becoming a personal insult and cause for social
rejection. One big possibility is that we’ll become more callous about allowing
the vulnerable – the elderly, disabled,
chronically ill and homeless – to be sacrificed in order to ‘manage’ future
crises. And many of us autistic and disabled know that we will be among the
culled. These are just some of the possibilities.
Alternatively, we could have some kind of social revolution,
a shaking up of the world’s complacency. This crisis has made the defects
of neo-liberalist capitalism patently obvious. The modern practise of ‘just-in-time’
supply-chains, for instance, with few or no reserves, doesn’t work in a
crisis. The profit-at-all-costs mentality and ‘lean,
mean’ health services have left many at risk. The crisis has also shown
that the real ‘essential
people’ of any society aren’t billionaires or politicians, but people like
supermarket workers, truck drivers, and medical personnel. Perhaps people will
look at our socio-economic system differently after this.
Now, I get that lots of
people are having similar reactions and thoughts right now. We’re watching
a horror unfolding before our very eyes. ‘Unprecedented’ is a media pop word
right now – we’re all in uncharted territory. Feeling sad, angry, frightened
and/or overwhelmed is an entirely appropriate set of responses to a pandemic. ‘Quiet
terror’, as one commentator called it. There are so many unknowns it’s
frightening. Even the scientists and doctors still don’t seem to know that much
about how this virus works, and they and governments all around the world are
playing catch-up, with fatal consequences. It’s already being said that mental
health is going to take a big hit from this.
But I do wonder if it’s going to be even harder for us autistics,
not so much because of social isolation (this will vary from one autistic to
another), but because of all the uncertainty. My own feeling is that we’re less
resilient emotionally, and may take it harder, and come back slower, if at all.
I know that a large chunk of my own sense of security has been removed, and I
don’t think it will ever return. I already have a very low level of trust in
the world, due to my experiences, now I have a new mistrust of Mother Nature as
well.
A big part of our trauma is surely going to be how so many
of the ‘normal’ things in our lives are either gone or in abeyance. I didn’t
realise till now how many of the world’s activities I simply took for granted,
even if I didn’t like them much. Something as ordinary as going to the
supermarket has become like taking a ticket in a lottery – I never know if what
I need will be there or not. What will I go without this week? How will I cope?
And of course as for many autistics, fear can lead to catastrophising, where I
imagine the worst, and then double and triple it.
My own country moved pretty quickly, more than a week ago,
into a complete
lockdown, and while I was processing it all, I pretty much fell apart. I’ve
done a lot of compulsive watching of TV news, eating junk food, irregular sleep,
and much more stimming, while my dreams have been full of earthquakes, violent
car accidents and wandering lost in strange places in the dark. It’s been an
effort to get myself even a little bit together, to make healthy meals, get to
bed earlier - and to do some of my much-neglected housework! I’ve had to cut
down my hours of watching TV news, and stayed off Facebook until I felt able to
cope with the onslaught.
Because I have a deeper level of fear, which I find hard to describe,
but which seems to be a sense of the world fracturing right in front of my eyes.
I’ve been floundering, grappling with this sensation of everything falling
apart. I guess that’s what an international emergency does to you. An old W B
Yeats poem keeps coming to mind, about how ‘the centre cannot hold’, and ‘anarchy
is loosed upon the world’. (Yes, I know I’ve probably been reading too much dystopian
sci-fi!) As a new order/reality takes shape, and I work out the new rules for
it, I hope this fear might ease.
And for all we know, it won’t be like any of this. Maybe there’ll
eventually be a vaccine, or life-saving treatments, and life will just go back
to what it was. Or something like it. Maybe. Right now, I’m just trying to ride
the wave, and take
one day at a time. Nobody knows what’s going to happen next. And that’s the
hardest thing for any autistic.
