Stefanie Preissner

Living all the colours of the emotional rainbow — every day

Is it just me, or are other people noticing that since this pandemic has happened, their emotions have become a daily rainbow? I spend periods of each day trapped inside each colour of this attitude arc, and seem to be losing the ability to control my emotions. Yesterday, I corona-cried for 20 minutes because a piece of red onion dropped on to the floor.

I exploded with enthusiasm later that day when I caught my neighbour getting into his car and stole a brief conversation with him through the window. I’m fearful of takeaway containers. I’m obsessed with jigsaws. I’m challenging myself to pick out the individual scents in my candles. I cry all the time: out of gratitude to the woman who works in my local Centra; out of despair that people can’t spend the last few days and hours with their dying loved ones, and just for no reason at all. The only thing getting me through the day is the Sudocrem ad with the calming pandas. I need more Sudocrem pandas.

Covid-negative

Seven days after my test, I found out that I was negative for Covid-19 but had viral pneumonia, confirmed by a chest X-ray. I was put on a course of steroids that did their terrible best and cleared it up, leaving me swollen, ravenous, and with aching joints. Still, I’m endlessly grateful to be on the mend. Once I finished my medication, I made my first trip outdoors in two weeks. I pulled the straps of my backpack so tight it felt like a hug from behind. I’ve never been a hugger, but I miss them now.

I rang my mam on my short walk to the shop to reassure her that I was strong enough to be outside again. We talk all the time now, a happy outcome, but our lives have shrunk so much that there’s very little to talk about. Conversations consistently begin with local and global coronavirus updates; the progress of our respective jigsaws; platitudes of reassurance and feigned hope, and then the sort of silent eternity that only mothers and daughters can build between themselves in a pandemic.

I bought a coffee, a newspaper and some chicken wings that sat alone in an empty wall fridge. Why, even in a pandemic, do people eschew chicken on the bone?

This virus was very unexpected, and I’m not good with unexpected viruses.

I like chicken wings. You know what you’re getting with chicken wings. I like to know what I’m getting. Every time Leo Varadkar announces a new and unprecedented measure, the Boy Housemate has to move through the FAST checklist to make sure I’m not having a stroke.

Once he’s sure I can raise my arm and smile out of both sides of my face, he changes the subject or the channel. I let him pick what to watch because I owe him. I can’t be a choosy beggar about TV viewing, because when I was in isolation, he sat on the stairs and talked to me through a door.

Being in isolation wasn’t like prison because, in fairness, I could move through the house and into the garden — but the planning took a level of precision that is usually reserved for air stewards explaining the emergency procedures on a plane. For me to go to my garden, the Boy Housemate had to stop what he was doing, gather his belongings, climb the stairs and shut the door of his room. Then I, like a 16-year-old sneaking out to kiss a boyfriend, would creep down the stairs, holding my breath and touching nothing.

The sneaking was just for effect admittedly, but that’s typical of me — making a dramatic situation even more dramatic than it needs to be.

Starting to adapt

I notice a few things. I’m starting to adapt. I used to love being isolated, alone, in my own company, not hugging people. I hated change.

Now I would love to meet everyone I know for a hugging marathon. I’d give my last roll of toilet paper for some change.

I also notice that I can make a small room seem very large if I focus on cleaning it one cubic centimetre at a time. The twisty thing at the side of my radiator is so immaculately clean you could eat a grape off it. Or even a blueberry. Keeping fresh fruit in my diet has become such a luxury that I start to relate to all the 15th-Century pirates who lost their teeth to scurvy. I’m refusing to let my desire for getting my steps in or eating fresh fruit every day drive me out into the world unnecessarily. I’m obsessed with my Fitbit and eating well, but now that steroids have suppressed my immune system and my lungs are raw from the weeks of coughing, the healthiest thing I can do is stay in, sit still and rest.

Or at the very least stay in, rock back and forth, and weep about dropped pieces of red onion.