I have been trying to think about something to say since the beginning of the pandemic. Pandemic, that’s a big fat scary word!
I usually have a lot to say, but I have been silent, pensive, waiting to see the outcome… I’ve never experienced anything like the Covid-19, a deadly virus in my lifetime. Actually, my life has been pretty calm as far as world events go. I’m too young to have lived through a war or the Great Depression and my mother fought for my rights as a woman, so I have not a lot to complain about outside myself.
So, this, The Pandemic, is a new experience for me. I think I might know more about what is NOT making me speak than what is… When I get really scared, I often get “Frozen in Fear”, but I don’t feel like that is what this is. I am also a delayed reactor, the first to respond and to come to the aid of my fellow man and this isn’t that either.
Because of my alcolism, I’ve had a lot of practice at keeping distance between myself and others, mostly emotionally, but physically too. When I first learned of the Corona-19 virus, I was really scared and I tried to keep people away from me while working and soon learned that people were not used to those physical boundaries. I even placed a line of chairs between them and me and they just walked around them, maskless, and in my space. The notion of social distancing completely foreign to most.
Soon my work was closed, due to the virus, and unfortunately so were of my recovery meetings. I stayed busy selling my neighbors homemade masks, which went like hot-cakes, and attending online meetings. I have always had my recovery meeting to be in and apart of when I have been worried and afraid, just sitting in a meeting makes me feel relaxed and safe. I did not get that same feeling of security from a Zoom meeting, in fact they felt cold and unattached.
I had gone from trying to keep people away from me, for fear of being exposed to the virus, to lonely and isolated from my favorite people, my family, and the rooms that made me feel safe. I became acutely aware of how important my recovery meetings were to me and how much I needed them to maintain healthy sobriety.
Now, after one year of “The Pandemic,” I have had the virus, survived, received my vaccination and I am back in the rooms of Alcoholic Anonymous that make me feel apart of, with the people like me that make me feel safe. I have also learned more about being patient and riding out the storm, this pandemic turned out NOT to be about me, but about protecting my mother and our elderly and disabled population and being of service to them.
I think that’s why I’ve been so quite, because it’s not about me at all.