A Fear of Sickness
So, I’ve always been weird about getting sick.
Ever since I was young, I was what you would call… a casual germophobe. Is that an actual term used? No idea. But, it’s always been something I’ve kinda called myself ever since I was around 9 or 10 when all of my… oddities became more pronounced.
Like, I never wanted to put myself in the same category as actual germophobes as it always made me feel weird. Like, there are people who deal with this every second of their lives and then there are people like me, ya know?
For example, I only eat using plastic silverware and plates. I also don’t use glass cups or anything like that. (And if you’re going to try and come at me for that, please don’t. I already feel crappy enough about the whole thing.) BUT, if I have to, I can eat using regular silverware and regular glass plates and stuff. Like, with restaurants and such.
Do I love it?
Oh no, not even a little. It makes me visibly uncomfortable, but I am good at hiding my discomfort so I can do the ‘normal things’ if I really need to.
I also sanitize my hands every time I touch something that isn’t mine, that I don’t know where it came from, or if I’m just in a particular mood because it freaks me out. Like, I become acutely aware of it. Almost as if I can see where my hands have touched my body ever since I touched that thing so I need to sanitize me and whatever I touched. (There’s a reason I usually have a giant thing of hand sanitizer in my room, for convenience sake.)
So, yeah, I’m not good with the idea of germs or interacting with anything ‘unclean’.
As you can imagine: This whole Coronavirus thing has me on a new level of freaked out.
I remember first hearing about it from Twitter, actually. I remember hearing about it being a thing in China and being pretty neutral about it overall. Of course, I had a bit of a pit in my stomach when reading about how it was quickly spreading and I vividly remember feeling a bit of solace in that fact that it probably wouldn’t affect me in any way.
Then, it spread out of China and started infecting every country.
Then, there was the whole cruise ship situation.
I was on Twitter every few hours looking at news stories and watching the number of cases go up and felt myself begin to panic. Of course, I didn’t want to freak my mom out. Not yet. So, I stayed in my room and started imagining worse case scenarios.
Like I tend to do.
After I learned about how it spread, I found myself using my hand sanitizer unconsciously a whole lot more, even as I worriedly noticed that it was almost empty.
Then, the cases started popping up in the US and I remember sitting in my bed, glued to my phone — to Twitter, more specifically. I remember seeing interviews of the President of the United States of America saying it was nothing. Waving it off and comparing it to the Flu, even as the death rate was going up and more and more people got infected at a rate I found myself stupefied about.
(Of course, next thing I knew, the President was calling it dangerous and a problem which, I almost found hilarious considering how completely unconcerned he was, like, 3 days ago, but whatever, I guess.)
So, I told my mom.
And she told my grandma and uncle.
Stores all around me started being ransacked and picked clean.
It felt like overnight things turned into a zombie movie or something.
Of course, I pretty much never go outside so I was pretty much glued to my mother’s side (Still a good distance away technically, but uh, you get what picture I’m painting here.) as she talked about people walking around in masks, empty shelves everywhere, and so many businesses and places closed down.
My mom remains calm about the whole thing and tries to calm me and be her usual optimistic self.
A few days later as the numbers go up, she starts sanitizing commonly used surfaces every night.
I run out of hand sanitizer right when things start to ramp up in the US which is… just great. (Especially as there’s none literally anywhere.)
I stay indoors, as usual, while my mom and stepfather still have to go out to buy things for the household and to go to work. They’re lucky to still have their jobs.
Talking to my grandmother, she doesn’t really know what’s going on. She knows there is ‘some kind of flu’ going on but she’s not concerned. She’s more preoccupied with bills and adult things to do something like ‘stay inside and don’t leave the house’.
(The fact that she doesn’t have any gas in her car, therefore, keeping her inside the house temporarily is something I’m all the more thankful for.)
I read tweets about how people are losing parents and grandparents.
I read stories about nurses and doctors dealing with all the people and doing the best they can with not nearly enough supplies.
I found myself laying in bed at night, wondering if my grandma is okay. Wondering if my boyfriend is okay. Wondering if his grandma is okay. Wondering about my great-grandma and my uncle and my aunt and my friends and my family — almost to the point where I have a headache.
My sleeping schedule, at this point, is screwed.
It’s 5am as I type this and I’m not all that tired.
Cause? I spent a lot of time thinking, trying to figure out what the hell I’m going to do and how I can keep those I love safe when they’re all so far away.
It’s weird feeling so helpless.
Do I hate quarantine? Oh, more than anything. I never realized how much I’d miss the outside world until I couldn’t see it anymore.
But, I’m still doing it. Why? Because I want this to be over. I want this to be over more than anything.
I want normality back.
And I know you do, as well.
