Living thru the Covid 19 onslaught is a lot like eating the proverbial elephant. To survive you should do it one bite at a time...small bites preferably. It is an enormous onus on the human body & spirit.
The stress of it does things to your brain. Simple tasks become impossible. Reading & comprehension? HA FORGET ABOUT IT.
I took a delivery job during this singular global event and I have struggled from the get bc I will read an order 10 times and still not understand or remember what I just read. Just yesterday I got stuck at a STOP sign waiting endlessly for it to turn green. The incident reminded of military training when grunts go thru a training exercises that test their motor skills & comprehension under duress. Even basic tasks they've known since childhood somehow become wholly insurmountable.
I have watched my fellow humans simiarly struggle & spiral. They come to the store and I can see them read the massive sign that clearly stipulates we are not taking walk ups but they tug on the door & look baffled when verbally told what they just read for themselves. I fully understand and empathize with their blank looks & panic. They can't understand a word. Not because they are dumb but because the stress they, WE, are all enduring is altering our cognition in ways that won't be fully understood until ten or even twenty years into the future.
I drive everyday on silent haunted highways & ghost town roads.
The anguish of uncertain future is palpable & terrifying to contemplate.
On Easter Sunday my friend's stress asserted itself when, after a merciless 12hr day of delivery driving, she announced "I look at you and think there but for the grace of God." Dear reader I was crushed. Under the guise of pity she derisively looked down on what I was doing to survive in a pandemic while simultaneously denying me God's grace. Her condescension crystaluzed what I was experiencing in real time on the road as a delivery driver...and that is just how many even half way decent people are genuinely hostile to the service industry even while dependent on them during an international calamity like corona.
I am having daily, hourly panic attacks on my delivery route especially going to Covid hot spots with no mask or other protective cover. My company does not care about anything except money which they are raking in at a 43% increase because stress does something else to people. It makes them hungry. And nothing sates an anxioys soul better than a box of fresh hot cookies. We are here to exploit that boy howdy. If I die at least I can afford to spare my mom the bill for my coffin.
Marquez said that "the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past." I ache with longing for all of this to finally end but am afraid it will be here for much longer than any of us can truly, fully comprehend. God help us.
I
