The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Coping? Wrestling with the present and worrying about the future
I don’t know about anyone else, but I feel like I’ve been shipwrecked and left marooned on an island, even though I am surrounded by people.
I talk and Zoom regularly with family members, friends and colleagues — and I have visited with them as the lockdown eased up, but I just can’t shake this feeling of isolation.
But it is not isolation in the truest sense. I am not even sure I can explain it.
I just feel my natural instincts as a human being to reach out and touch somebody is being snuffed out by masks and social distancing.
And I am not sure I am ready to be this new kind of socially distanced human.
I guess you could say I am feeling a little blue and melancholy. To me, 2020 has felt like one prolonged crisis with only lies or guesstimates of victory in sight.
Things are so different from a year ago; simple things I took for granted have been taken away or modified to a point that I feel disengaged.
I miss sitting at the bar with other fans in Buffalo Wild Wings drinking beer, eating hot wings and watching football, basketball and baseball — and keeping an eye on Wimbledon and the Olympics.
Now, only tables and booths are available, so if I am not with friends, it doesn’t make sense to go.
I miss going to the concerts on the New Haven Green and watching people dancing to the music, as well as hopping MetroNorth to take in the New York Philharmonic performing the 1812 Overture in Central Park.
But those summer events were canceled or rescheduled, as were blockbuster movies slated for summer release.
Yes, a year makes a lot of difference in a lot of ways.
The days of walking directly into some stores without waiting on line are a toss-up and simple things, like sitting on a bench next to someone, will bring an evil — or at least cautious — eye.
And who knew that a walk in the park or a spot on the beach would come with conditions?
I’ll just be glad when it’s over, and, in some ways, that is already beginning to happen.
But getting things back to normal isn’t feeling very normal as everything has been thrown off-kilter.
“Our normal coping patterns in which we play and maintain our mood have been interrupted,” said Dr. Jeff Dietz, an assistant professor at Quinnipiac University.
I talked to Dietz, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst at the Frank H. Netter School of Medicine, about what I thought was an overall feeling of mild depression being experienced throughout the nation.
Dietz said much of these feelings have been brought on because “social and familial networks have been interrupted” by the events that have taken place this year.
“The basic fabric of society and connectedness is now under question and divisiveness is pervasive . ... It’s like a collected drama,” he said.
And that drama is casting a pall over everyday life as COVID-19 and its effects continue to deliver bad news that is challenging every aspect of our lives.
Things are bad right now for a lot of people in America as COVID-19 has disrupted people’s lives and left many of us disengaged from our usual American way of life — whether we are struggling or not.
I am not among the millions of Americans who have lost their job or income. I am not standing in a food line wondering how to stretch what will be in the bags placed in my arms or in the trunk of my car.
I do not face eviction and, more importantly, I have not had to make arrangements to bury a loved one.
But still, I am filled with anxiety and uncertainty, even here in Connecticut where things are pretty good compared to elsewhere.
There is no doubt that things will get better and one day we will return to a new normal.
But right now, the part of me that makes me human and feel connected — the ability to reach out to touch somebody’s hand — has been scooped out and is being replaced with a brave new world of human conditioning.
And I’ve got to say, I don’t like it.
Coping? Wrestling with the present and worrying about the future.