I don't really know how to start this post, so I will just say this - we are in unprecedented times. No one alive right now is equipped to deal with this. From government and scientists all the way down to the average Joe and of course children.
There's no manual called "How to Beat the Coronavirus" and there's no self-help book entitled "So You're in a Pandemic! How Not to Have a Complete Mental Breakdown." If there were, we'd be in a much different state than we are currently.
So how do we cope with something on this large of a scale? The answer is unknown. As someone who deals with depression, I realized tonight, as I write this post at 4 a.m. after spending majority of the night crying or feeling guilty for crying and keeping my husband awake, that I have not been coping healthily.
I don't know if there are really "right and wrong" ways to cope but there are certainly "healthy and unhealthy" ones.
For me, I am a very strong person. I try really hard to not let things break me down. The problem with that is that it only works for so long. I think of it as a dam. The dam is my protector, keeping my depression at bay. The water inside the dam is not just the depression itself, but feelings that push harder on my depression.
In a regular situation, I'm able to keep the dam going strong, holding out until that extra water eventually evaporates, or what have you, and then moving on. But sometimes there's a chance that the dam could overflow, or someone or something can break out the sledgehammer and beat on that dam until it breaks.
And that's exactly what happened to me. I had a conflict over something that was blown way out of proportion in a space I thought was safe. Every moment of that conflict was a sledgehammer smash to my dam. And the bigger the crack in the dam got, the more feelings I had and eventually it burst.
All of the feelings I had pent up over the past month came flowing out and I'm in the head space right now where I don't know how to stop it. The water just keeps on coming, figuratively and literally via my eyeballs.
My usual fail-safes aren't even cutting it at this point - talking about it, sleeping it off, finding closure in the situation and even my husband's loving reminders and hugs still weren't enough to shut it off.
The conflict may have burst the dam, and I still have a lot of feelings about that, but now on top of that, I've been forced to confront the feelings I had locked away as a protective measure. The anxiety I feel being stuck inside for weeks and weeks, the ache of missing my family, the anger of dealing with stupid people and the general daily frustrations of work, just to name a few.
Allllll of those feelings are now front and center and I am honestly at a loss. I turned to writing this post because it was the only fail-safe I hadn't tried yet. Putting all of those feelings on paper helps me to get it out of my system via organized thought and has kept my mind focused on writing a coherent message and not just the incessant repetition of negative thoughts.
All of this brings me back to the issue at hand - coping with something we just don't know how to handle. None of us have ever really been locked away like this and kept from the people and things we love. Some people try to tough it out and eventually break down, some channel it into art, some channel it into anger and others just go totally insane.
I say creativity is the healthy way to go. None of us need hatred and anger from others right now. There's really never an excuse to be ugly toward people. We are ALL dealing with this. We are ALL stuck inside and away from those we care about. Don't use it as an excuse to be mean to people.
I've chosen to channel my frustration, sadness, anger, guilt, anxiety and whatever other weird pandemic feelings I'm having into being creative, whether it be writing an article, doing my makeup or designing my island on Animal Crossing. Channel those emotions into something that will make you happy, take your mind of the current climate and, hopefully, make you feel better, even if only a little bit.
There's definitely no instruction manual on how to deal with this, but if we all try to find healthy ways to cope, things will definitely be better off!
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