Coronavirus - 1, Mental Health - 0

A panic attack feels like pain in my chest, headache, burning in my face, a difficulty to breathe… all things that also convinced me I had Coronavirus.

From 11:00am to about 1:00pm on Sunday I coughed three times and became certain; I had the Rona. See, after an 11-day quarantine we drove to get our second attempt at a grocery store pickup.

It was another fail.

Within the week we ordered over eighty items of food and received about twenty of them, six of those being cheese. In trying to stay quarantined, we tried not to go to multiple grocery stores foraging for food. But we were out of options, and vegetables. We needed food. I was dropped off at Trader Joes while the rest of the family drove around aimlessly, because, naturally, we only risk one adult at a time. Forget normal, none of it felt okay. No, waiting in line, six feet from the next person, at the same store I just walk into every Sunday, wasn’t the first trigger. However, it was the one that delivered anxiety far more efficiently than our pickup order.

Yes, I had my first Coronavirus induced panic attack on Sunday. Honestly, I knew it was coming all week. I already felt the stress in my soul and the anxiety in my actions expanding with every news story and update. I instinctively made those trusted to assist me in an emotional spiral aware, that I was struggling. Still, I continued the day’s plans because I knew that slowing down to allow it to catch up with me would only make it worse. I knew I needed to push through, and as far as possible, so there would be less for me to do when I came to.

After it washed over me.

After it broke me.

I thought about how many people were dying, how overwhelmed I felt, and how hard it was to find flour. I questioned how many times, and how effectively, I wiped down my cart with the Clorox wipe that a kind Auntie passed me in line.

I didn’t carry them. I carry baby wipes, not disinfectant.

It was how all the employees that I usually exchange weekend plans with wore exhaustion on their brows and annoyance on their tongues. I now saw every single person as an enemy, the person that would infect me, the person that would kill someone else through me…

I rushed through shopping, hyperaware of the people waiting in line for me to exit, mostly afraid to catch someone’s sneeze or lingering cough. I tried to think of only want we need, while fighting the impulse to buy it all, with no time to fully appreciate my aha moment – oh! People are hoarding because of the same fear I feel right now. But I have been scared most of my life, so I know how to push passed it. They don’t.

They also don’t need all that tissue.

Call me entitled, but I don’t want to go back to sodium laced, nutrient deficient Jino’s Pizza. I don’t want to resort to “whatever is available.” Not for me and not for my family.

I don’t want to feel the same loneliness I did during my initial transition into being a stay-at-home Mom. That shit almost ended me. I don’t want to talk to my best friend through the window as she is dropping off milk and fruit snacks for her Godchildren. I needed her hug. I needed the comfort of seeing her embrace our Littles without worrying what she may have been exposed during her shift at the hospital.

I have lived through many challenging times, and I was not made for any of it. Just because I survived it, doesn’t mean I was built for it. When I grew beyond those financial and emotional battles, I did so with the full intent to never return to either. Those aren’t environments you thrive in. Those are places that break you. Yes, you learn how to build yourself from scratch, but those valuable lessons are not ones you need to learn repeatedly. Not like this.

This isn’t about gratitude. This isn’t about public safety. I have done, and will do, whatever is required. But that doesn’t mean it is healthy for me. Surviving has never felt like success to me. Sure, we have been through a lot of awful situations, but most of us have not endured a pandemic. I don’t know what victory will look like, but I know what fear, isolation, food insecurity and anxiety feel like. They feel a lot like the symptoms of COVID-19 on Web-MD.

But if you’re convinced you know something I don’t because you want to minimize the psychological effects this will have on us all, let’s go. We both have time. And after we trade war stories, then laugh at things that at one point probably made us cry – because coping mechanisms can be dangerously effective – we will still be fighting through an unfathomable situation. Much like we labored during the times we now highlight as “character builders” because pride won’t let most people admit how dysfunction and poverty broke them more than built them.

When telling someone how much more able they are to deal with what is going on because struggling made them strong, and that they can capitalize on the instincts from previous turmoil, you forget those instincts come saturated with trauma. You neglect the scars and sacrifice, the sanity and pain that it cost to get through. You ignore that none of that matters when you can’t sit with your best friend, in your home safely, as the world around you becomes more frightful and foreign.

When this is all over, I won’t forget how I felt during the corona-quarantine.

And I will know I don’t ever want to experience it again.

I already knew I didn’t want to experience anything like this again.