It’s hard to write when anxious.
I was already having issues with anxiety before the word “pandemic” became a daily concern, before I started to worry if my day job would exist six months down the line, after the repercussions from a near-total shutdown of the economy hits us.
I dissociate into books. They have always been both a retreat and a place to hide from the world around me. I read fast, I always have, and it’s not all that unusual for me to read 2 to 3 books every week. I didn’t notice, initially, until I started tracking my reading a bit more faithfully on Goodreads, but since the first of the year and possibly longer, I have been averaging 5 books per week, sometimes more, and that’s not even counting the fanfiction or literary articles I read.
I was not just reading, I was hiding in the pages of my books. And that was before Covid-19.
So now I have to worry about getting sick, about those friends of mine who are immune-compromised and the family working on the front lines in the medical field. I have to worry about the economy. I have to worry that an administration I despise will use this as an excuse to suspend civil liberties, to deny the country a fair and free election, and set themselves and their idiotic puppet up as the de facto dictator they want, and that I, other LGBTQ+ people and other minorities will be the first to suffer under that regime (even more than we already are), because minorities are always the first and easiest targets.
The weight of it is paralyzing while at the same time some parts of me just wants to scream and yell and rail against everything. I can’t write right now – or at least, I know that anything I tried to write would be so tinged with what I’m feeling that it would have to be thrown out. I am painting, a bit. But mostly? I’m reading.
It doesn’t seem like it’s a bad time to be hiding in a book.
( Photo by Elina Krima on Pexels)