I don’t know about you all, but I did see some of this coming. I was watching from afar earlier in the year and started thinking of how an outbreak may manifest here. I suppose I saw some of this coming because I’m in healthcare, am skeptical of many things, and I have written academically about the ebola outbreak. My mind was primed.
Now, despite seeing it coming, I too have been knocked back by the despairing ferocity of the situation. This includes the rapid spread as well as the rapid downturn of the economic market. I don’t think I truly saw the latter coming. Actually, I know I didn’t see that economic downturn or standstill coming. Everything has stopped. Only three people at a time into certain businesses. My hair salon closed for a while. Yes. Those are not really important. But those are what blindsided me.
The human toll has been so to manifest in the United States. Then it became the apocalypse. At least in New York. One thing about a week ago it all hit me hard. I was giving an update and had to take a moment to mentally decompress. It was literally a moment as I had to get right back to moving a conversation forward. After I left that conversation I paced around the room and then felt a moment of panic. A moment of despair. It all felt too much. I wondered if the Walking Dead show was in actuality a glimpse into our collective future. That was too much to fathom at that moment. Two minutes later I moved myself onto the next task at hand.
Therafter, I have held it together. However, each morning provides me with a little bit of anxiety as there is so much unknown. Now, I am just settling into this new normal. Our psyche is maybe less battered. I don’t know if that is true or whether that is comforting. I am not too sure we want to acclimate to this. Instead, we may wish to not accept this state of being as our new normal. This chaos and frustration shouldn’t be part of this new normal.
Categories: Culture, current events, Health, mental health, Psychology, society
psychologistmimi 
It is a new reality we have to live with until this pandemic is conquered.
Be safe.
LikeLike
SMiLes Evolutionary
Speaking We are Closer
To ‘Normal’
With the
‘Avatar
Exception’
When We See
Each other Die
Regularly We Appreciate
Life and Each Other
More
Yet
We So Easily
Fail To See Light
In Dark until
Dark
Saves
The Love
Within Lesson
For me a First Tear
In Five Years And
Strength in the
Root of
My Soul
(Love)
Putting A Beloved
Sick Cat Sunnyboy
Relative of Yellow
Boy Down
Then
In
2013
Tears
Bring Love’s
Strength
DarK
Nature’s
Way oF LiGHT🌈🖼
LikeLike
https://monthlycritic.wordpress.com/2020/03/26/lost-girls/ My latest review if you fancy reading. The show must go on and thank heaven for Netflix, Curzon, etc in those most unusual times. Welcome to follow.
LikeLike
I knew two things as soon as the reports started coming from China:
1) it was going to spread very fast, and the whole world would be involved
2) as someone older, chronically ill, and physically disabled – I would be in the most vulnerable group.
Now I’m reading they’re getting ready to triage my life away if I get sick. Not looking good; I don’t know what I’ll do if I get sick other than stay in my apartment unless breathing gets impossible – and even then, knowing that the hospital will be saving its limited resources for ‘worthier’ patients will make it not a choice.
I had planned to live here the rest of my life, which I planned on being until, oh, at least 115 (I’m 70), and writing. Finishing the Pride’s Children trilogy is first, and then, well, lots of other novel projects.
We are on lockdown. We are practicing extreme care with everything we have control over. And we’re still at the mercy of other people.
You can imagine how we feel when we see people enjoying themselves on the Florida beaches for spring break (and then flying home all over the country), or the careless dancing elders at The Villages dance cheek to cheek.
Even if everything goes well, we will probably be in that lockdown for whatever time it takes to develop, test, and distribute a vaccine – because we can’t afford the chance of getting the virus.
I saw all of us retirees, especially the younger ones, as being rewarded for a lifetime of work, and having time with kids and grandkids and greatgrandkids.
The world is upside down because those in charge, when warned by SARS, MERS, and Ebola, failed to invest in enough research to be able to handle anything else coming at them, and this is it.
We thought governments were doing their job. They weren’t. They were enriching the already-rich, and messing around with healthcare.
LikeLike
Not normal but maybe a valuable chance to change!
Stay Strong…
LikeLike
Thanks. Most definitely a time to embrace change.
Hope you are doing well.
LikeLike
Continued references to the “new normal” by the media and policymakers seem to be a strategy to get us all to accept the infringement of our personal rights long after this pandemic is over. Between the talk of tracking people by their cell phone, the establishment of “isolation units” in Massachussetts, calls for nationalization, and the deployment of the National Guard to enforce shelter-in-place orders in certain states, I have quite a bit of concern with this new normal despite being told it’s for my own good. More concerning is that I appear to be the only one concerned.
LikeLike
Hmm. Good point. This new normal will continue to morph and into what, who knows?
Hope you ars well.
LikeLike