Living with the new normal - spoiler alert I hate it.

Imagine this, you are walking down a street, one you are almost too familiar with, you see on your right the house where the older couple lives, their car and plants untouched a film of dust exposing the last fingerprints on the car, they haven’t gone anywhere in days. You walk further and you see your house, your comfort zone…but you get this feeling like you are being watched. You tell yourself it is the kids playing in the front yard across the street, and you keep walking, the gravel street crunching beneath your sneakers. Suddenly and without warning… you feel the shift in the air, you’re cold but your heart is racing and you can’t get to your house fast enough to escape something you can’t even see. If you have ever had that feeling in life, congratulations…you feel what I live every day. Since the start of the global pandemic, I have the feeling like I am being stalked by someone I can never put a face or a name too. It sucks, sometimes it keeps me awake at night. Starting from the beginning, I like many other millennials who get their news from Facebook and emails from their parents, never saw the wave that was COVID-19 coming, crashing into the life we all knew, drowning us before we could get to the shallows. As the virus spread like cream cheese on an everything bagel(can you tell I’m hungry writing this), more information on what it did to our bodies was released, every day, with a number as high as a lotto prize of the people infected. Each passing day, more and more people, more states lit up on the map and my anxiety skyrocketed, unable to be controlled. I even went as far as tying yoga. It never helped to curve the way I was feeling, with my shoulders at my ears not knowing if I wanted to scream, cry, or scrub my hands till they were raw…because germs. Now we are living in what the news and world alike is proclaiming as the “new normal” which for most people is staying at home, with family and often times a pet and just working or going to school, all over the computer. For me, along with working from home tutoring, I live with asthma. Which, for people who do not know, it means that I already have a hard time breathing, without even being sick. So with each passing day, schools closing, shelter in-place orders happening and the death toll rising, I am living as what the medial world calls “someone with pre-existing conditions” which is what is cited as a cause when people are dying, yes dying, from the Covid-19 virus. I also live with ADHD, which runs my brain in circles faster than a New Yorker heading to the deli to cure a hangover on a Sunday morning(again still very hungry). The cocktail of asthma and ADHD has sent my world into a tailspin. If you had told me 6 weeks ago my life would turn into anxiety filled days where I cleaned, counted the 68 surfaces in my home, and constantly found myself breathing the navy seal water safety way, I would have said you were crazy. But here I am, cleaning every time I get anxious, which happens about 5 times a day, when I have too much time to think. My morning is now, “am I breathing normal or is this what short breaths feel like, if I went for a run and came back, is my short breathing me dying?” and “did I clean that already?….oh well I will just bleach the whole house again.” My afternoon monologue is the same breathing freak out, cleaning, and acting like a dog whenever I hear the front door open. I need to know who it was and if they washed their hands. If they did not, I will be happy to bleach spray them down, just so I can feel better.I went grocery shopping to stock up on food and silently cried the whole time because people kept getting close to me…and that was 3 weeks ago. That is also the hard part about living with roommates, they can leave, still social distance but in my brain it sounds like this: The door opens and I hear my roommate go straight to their room: Me: “ well shit, now I have to wipe down any surface they could have touched, breathed on or got close to” Me: “is my passive aggressive note to wash hands literally every time you leave the house and come back too much or not enough” Me: “why are they leaving the house in the first place” Me: “do these people not understand that if I get sick I can die a little faster then them” Me: “why did they not wipe down the groceries they just brought in and wash their hands before touching anything in the house” Me: “why did you not wipe down the mail and wash your hands after” Me: “did you need that drink from the coffee place, you do not know where that person who made you the coffee went, now you touched the cup they did, brought back into the house and now I’m going to die..again faster than you will” Me: “why am I the only one cleaning, and not going anywhere and still if one of these people leaves and comes home I still die first” Me: “I am this close to buying a tent and living out of that” Me: “Must. Wash. Clothing every time I leave the house and come back, even it it is just to move the trash can from the end of the driveway back to the house. I don’t know where the garbage men have been or touched” Yes, all of these thoughts go through my screwed up head every. single. day. You may think I am crazy or cleaning 5 times a day is overkill, but to me, it is not, but I also can’t control it. In fact, writing this made me go clean. Now the house smells like a pool. But I don’t care. Update I cleaned again. You may be reading this wondering why I have become this way. Let me explain. One of my roommates was in Anchorage when the Covid-19 virus claimed its first case in Alaska. That was the worst week of my life. All I wanted to do was cry at the things I could not control. All I could think about was my asthma and that I was someone with a pre-existing condition. Now, some backstory on the roommate, he chose to stay in Anchorage an extra week to help the students form the boarding school get on flights back to their home villages all over Alaska. He chose to stay, he chose to remain in what was the epicenter of the virus in Alaska. The time comes where I am curious about his return to Sitka as flights were getting scarce. He said he would be back the next week, only extending his stay in Anchorage, where the virus was spreading every passing day. Soon the text message went out, after the governor of the state ordered people returning to Alaska or traveling within the state to self quarantine for 14 days. Safe to say my anxiety could have filled a small pool with the tears. I asked where he would be self quarantine as he was NOT returning to the house. His response was he would go somewhere if my other roommate(Lysette) agreed to pay for part of his rent, internet and utilities. When if you think about it....I have house sat for a whole month and still paid my 1/3 share of the utilities and internet when I was not even in the house, and so had my other roommate when she house sits. When in reality it was his responsibly to understand he chose to stay in Anchorage with the virus spreading. He is also a grown adult who needs to understand that bringing the virus into the house would kill me or at least send me into a fit of rage anyone started showing symptoms. If is was him who brought the virus in I wold not be able to contain my rage to say lightly. I promise I am a normally calm girl. So my roommate lip and I started calling anyone and everyone we knew in Sitka to find him a place to self quarantine. We worked for hours asking if anyone has a spare room or a place at the fine arts campus. Unfortunately our efforts were exhausted, but turns out he had a spine and asked one of the Mount Edgecumbe(the now empty boarding school) people if he could crash in an empty dorm for the 2 weeks. This was also after lip and I told him to go jump off a literal bridge if he thought we were about to pay for him to go somewhere or cover his house expenses share. He is also not Americorps so he has “real” money and lip and I have our $1000.00 stipend. Needless to say, he stayed out of the house for 2 weeks, and has since returned to my castle of hand washing..if only I could have alligators to bite people who get close to the house or do not wash their hands. But now he also disappears during the day, who knows where he goes, which sends me into an anxiety attack, every time he leaves. I will end my rant on that there, as if I keep adding, I will go light something on fire out of anger, since now as an Alaskan I can start a fire in 60 seconds. Needless to say, he went grocery shopping and did not wipe down the groceries and I freaked, in a totally not at all completely near crying calm way. Takeaways from the anxiety of Covid-19 1. LIVE ALONE so in the event of another pandemic, you can lock your doors and never leave. 2. Get a pet, maybe something that is indoors, or a dog if you have a balcony and that can be its outside time. 3. LIVE ALONE - roommates are great until a pandemic hits and they are leaving the house. 4. You can have all the fears you want, tell people about your fears and they will still not wash their god dam hands(sorry mom). 5. People suck, in a pandemic, you see the true colors of the people who care and understand, and the people who do not. If one more person gets near me when I am just trying to get my apocalypse food, I will hurt you. First I will cry and shake at how anxious I am at how close you are to me, and break all the eggs you buy and since the limit is one per household, no eggs for you. 6. When going into quarantine if another person is involved in your house, pick someone who likes indoor activities like video games, national geographic, backgammon and Harry Potter marathons. If my students had their pick they I know exactly who they would have quarantined me with. 7. People who are immuno-compromised and have pre-existing conditions need buttons we can wear so people understand that I was wearing a mask 3 weeks ago when I went grocery shopping for me and for my lungs. And to ducking stay 6 feet away from me. 8. Don’t even get me started on the grievances I have for Americorps.

9. Make enough money in life or marry a rich gentlemen to have a private island.

10. Tiger king is not a good show, I watched one episode and stopped there. There I said it.