The Daily Dread is Back
Every now and again, I venture onto BlueSky, hoping I’ll find some vestige of early-teens Twitter. A few weeks ago, screenwriter C. Robert Cargill posted something that voiced a feeling I’ve had deep inside me but couldn’t put into words.
“I feel like we need to re-institute Pandemic Rules. Like, we’re in a trade war with fucking Canada. Of course you can have a Snickers ice cream bar for breakfast and chug wine from a mug during Zoom meetings. The rules are there are no more rules. Just pajama-bottom it to the weekend anything goes.”
This week will mark five years (!) since COVID-19 shut down the world. It’s wild to think about that time now. That whole first year of the pandemic is like a bad dream: I can remember broad details about that time, but very few specifics.
But one thing I do viscerally recall about those first two or three months of the pandemic was waking up every single day with dread.
The status quo changed by the day, sometimes by the hour. I felt suspended in time and space — unable to plan for the future, barely able to function in the present.
On Zoom calls, FaceTimes, or socially distanced outdoor gatherings, we’d all ask each other, “How are you doing?” And the standard response would be a smirk and a “You mean, aside from all this?” as you flailed your arms around you.
Five years later, that heavy, daily dread is back. I wake up every day wondering, “What horrific, unprecedented thing will happen today?”
Will it be firing tens of thousands of federal employees?
Will it be cutting NIH funding and strangling medical research throughout the country?
Will it be enacting enormous tariffs on our neighbors and closest allies, making just about everything in our lives more expensive?
Will it be pulling the rug out from under Ukraine?
Will it be announcing plans to turn the Gaza Strip into a tourist destination?
Will it be threatening to withhold federal emergency management funds from states that didn’t vote Republican in the last election?
Will it be the “disappearing” of anyone who exercises their right to protest?
Will it be the slow, painful cratering of the economy?
But, unlike five years ago, life just keeps … going on.
We go to work. The kids go to school. We shuffle them to their various activities. We grocery shop. We go to playdates. We move forward with wild pre-election dreams like publishing a book.
(OK, maybe that last one’s just me.)
The cognitive dissonance is disorienting and exhausting.
One moment I’m panicked, trying to batten down whatever hatches I can find before things get really bad. The next, I want to spend all the money and plan all the things because this might be the best the world will ever be in our lifetime.
One moment, I’m encouraging everyone I know to call their representatives and providing them with phone numbers and scripts. The next I’m curled up in the fetal position on my couch, trying to block out everything except the sound of my breath.
I keep feeling like whatever I do, I’m doing it wrong.
In that way, it feels a lot like March 2020.
And if that’s the case, someone hand me some Snickers ice cream bars and a mug of wine.