You Don’t Have COVID-19? You Can Still Grieve

Wow. This is the first time in the 10 weeks since quarantine started that I’ve been inspired to write. I’ve wanted to! I’ve tried. But alas, I’ve always ended up staring at a blinking cursor and a blank screen.

A couple weeks ago, my boyfriend (an essential worker) came home from work and found me lying flat on the kitchen rug. It was a weird place to lie, but I was feeling hugely unmotivated that day. The sun–which I’d been craving–had finally decided to shine its rays through a cloudless sky, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to move from the rug.

So it goes with daily lockdown life in New York State. There are good days and bad days, up weeks and down weeks, exciting moments and draining moments. I have so far avoided contracting COVID-19–or Corona as I prefer to call it. And while somehow I’ve managed to deal with a bout of lice and poison ivy in quarantine, I’m alive; I’m breathing; I’m healthy.

We were doing this for the greater good. But that novelty has begun to wear off as restrictions are lifted in some states, yet fears and the virus remain. When some of us are still on lockdown, but others aren’t.

At the beginning of the spread of the virus–when life as we knew it began to take on a drastically different shape–we were all reminding each other that we were lucky. We had each other, albeit socially distantly, and we had our health. Death tolls were climbing but we were, for all intents and purposes, safe.

But what my physical health has provided me since the lockdown began, my mental health has not. It’s fair-minded and equitable to remind ourselves of the good and the luck that we have, but it does not do our mental health any justice to negate the difficult circumstances we find ourselves in, virus or not.

Our feelings not only deserve to be acknowledged, but it is imperative that we recognize them. Pushing them under the proverbial rug (not the rug my boyfriend found me recently lying on) does not make them any less valuable or warranted. If that’s all we did, overshadowing our own struggles by comparing them to the struggles of others, our seemingly small concerns would become a large lump under that rug that we would one day trip and fall on. And speaking from experience, that downward spiral is a black hole of its own.

My dear friend who has been experiencing the restricting lockdown life in India reminded me recently that we are always, always allotted to our feelings:

“Quick reminder that it’s okay to not be okay. We are all going through grief. Even if we have stable jobs and our loved ones are healthy.” –Pooja Dutt

Someone out there will always be in a worse situation than you, but you cannot live the life you’re meant to live if you do not take care of yourself. Have theory of mind, but remember to be self-aware. In your reflections of the world in its current state and your place in it, do not deprive yourself of the self-care and compassion that you need, that you deserve, and that you are inherently entitled to.