Today I Hit Peak Covid And I Can’t Stop Crying!
The frustrations of being locked down for over 200 days.
This morning I got unreasonably angry with a voice on the phone that sounded like they were in a deep tunnel filled with water.
After a minute of telling them I couldn’t hear a word they were saying, I demanded they transfer me to someone else. I wanted to hang up but didn’t want to waste another ten minutes on hold. I hung up anyway then screamed the ‘F’ word so loud my partner came to see if I was okay.
Now I’m crying. Today is peak Covid for me. In fact, today marks 200 days of Melbourne being in some version of what we now call lockdown. For me, It goes one step further. I’m also in quarantine, the evil big sister of lockdown. Quarantine has been the straw that broke the camel’s back for me.
My partner and I live in Melbourne’s inner south — an area that holds a lot of privilege — and we don’t know a single person that has had Covid-19, but I have felt it circling us for the past few months. We started to notice the virus sneaking into our area: the newsagent down the road, the Subway store down the other end, the café near my partner’s work. Now it is on us and the risk of contracting it is real. We ‘stan Dan’ (our state premier), and have done everything we are supposed to do to keep ourselves and others safe. My adult son has Crohn’s disease and has to take immunosuppressant medication. I am terrified that if either one of us got sick, we wouldn’t be able to see each other, so I follow the rules for him and every other immunocompromised and vulnerable person out there.
Living in an area of such privilege has also shown me the worst in people. My anger started simmering last year, whenever I saw people sans mask in situations where they should have had them on. The lift in our building for example. The people who think the rules don’t apply to them, the ones who walk along maskless so they can ‘drink their coffee’ or because they are ‘exercising’. Not following health orders because you don’t understand them, or because you need to go to work, is one thing. Looking for every loophole in the book to break them, is another.
This is where the kernel of fury starts to take root. I heard about the infamous engagement party where sixty-nine people from our area gathered maskless. My fury started to build in intensity. I was on the phone with my brother and he pointed out that I was swearing a lot more than usual. The level of calm I’d been able to maintain over the past eighteen months was starting to falter.
Ironically, the number I called this morning was for the supermarket chain from which I am getting my groceries delivered today. The same chain I was shopping at six days ago when an infectious person was in the store. It was a tier two exposure site, so I had a test that came back negative on Tuesday morning. Later on Tuesday morning, I received a call from a lovely contact tracer; she told me that the exposure site had been raised to tier one. I was now considered a close contact. I CRIED when I told my partner that he couldn’t go to work for fourteen days. That was the start of the tears. Coinciding with us going into quarantine, the tragedy in Afghanistan started to escalate. Lebanon is experiencing a devastating crisis. A fifteen-year-old boy in Australia died after contracting pneumococcal meningitis and COVID-19.
Every time I talk about these things — and as I write — I cry. My heart is heavy from the build-up of universal sadness, layer upon layer since the start of the pandemic. Now stuck in my house, having no control over when I can even step out my door — or when the groceries I ordered two days ago are going to arrive, I am overflowing with frustration and grief for all the things humanity is suffering right now. Anger at all the entitled dickheads not doing their bit. Fear that we don’t know when it’s all going to end.
My beautiful friend Dave called as I was writing this; he always manages to put things into perspective. He told me that I am doing what I always do: to adapt and keep going; to pull my big-girl pants on. The difference this time is that my pants aren’t big enough, that what is going on is bigger than us all and it’s okay to not cope sometimes. He told me to keep crying (I am, don’t worry Dave), to be kind to myself. He said that I am a reed who will bend with the wind and not break. He told me to swear as much as I want. So, f$%# it, I will, and you can too. We can all cry and swear and eat treats (if your groceries have arrived). We can call our loved ones and sob. Then we can cry and swear and eat more treats. F$%# it! PS. Sorry people, Dave is taken!
Lindy Ralph (she/her) is a middle-aged Australian writer from Melbourne, Australia, living on Boon Wurrung land. She is the mother of a kind young man, a partner, friend, and foodie. Connect with her here: Website, Linktree, and Instagram.