There is a reason I call it Corona, rather than COVID-19, though I will call it COVID when speaking with others. Back in January 2019, when I was still living in China, it was the unnamed virus and then it was coronavirus. During a time of great unease and even debilitating stress, it was a tiny piece of relief and personal amusement to call the virus spreading across Eastern China the same as a famous beer. It’s also a natural association. With my name being Stella Marie, one database design professor yelled out “Beer!” upon looking at my face in an attempt to remember my name, and it has been a common joke among peers, whenever we find ourselves at a bar after work or class, that Stella Artois is my drink, though I don’t have a taste for beer.
There have been numerous articles and news segments covering the outbreak. I’ve heard that corona was a bio-weapon developed by the Chinese government and whether or not that’s true, I’ve told others that it’s the most costly biohazard I’ve ever seen. A whole hospital was built in 10 days. The whole country was shut down for business longer than the week of Chinese New Year (preferably known as Spring Festival in the mainland). Since coming back to the US, and though I quarantined in Shanghai during the Spring Festival, I stayed inside for 53 days. On the 53rd day, I stepped out for the first time to stand a minute or two on the back porch of one of my family houses. The next day, my mom had no reason to go out but on a whim, she took me and my nephews out for blizzards from Wendy’s. Whether here in the US or in China, while I was never one to bother much with any kind of media, I have seen more news this last year than I have the last seven years of my life, and I still have little idea what is going on.
Perhaps writing this article is an act of catharsis. I had no idea how deeply the outbreak of what would become a worldwide pandemic and one of the United States’ greatest failures in public safety and the boiling pot of racial and political division affected me. After acquiring state health insurance and doing my rounds, finding no medical explanation for my physical suffering, after a psychiatrist told me that all she heard coming out of my mouth was “trauma, trauma, trauma,” I followed the psychiatrist’s advice and participated in an intensive outpatient program for mental health. During one session, the subject of the pandemic came up. This was back in October and while assuring the others of their safety, I delved into too much detail about my particular situation back in January and February. Even though the situation finally came into perspective, I still could not wrap my head around it. Even now, I am struggling to relate with what happened and I neither see the experience as good nor bad but it was stressful.
On the 23rd of January, I visited the administrative office of my school to submit the hard copy of my thesis. It was the first I’d heard of the virus starting to spread around and in a passing comment, I heard we might be staying in. I did not think anything of it, and with Spring Festival being the next three days, my apartment was empty, half of Shanghai was gone to their homes in other provinces and small towns, but the next day, the country was locked down. I woke up to the sound of bird song so clear that it haunted the air throughout my complex. In the morning, there were no cars, not even the perpetual buzz of traffic around the city. I did not see anyone on the streets for three days and on the fourth day, I counted how many cars and people I saw. In a city with a population of over a hundred million, it had become a ghost town over night.
Over the next week, while the gravity of the situation never reached me consciously, I had a full mental break. If I cried, I would cry for three hours straight. One day, I cried for seven hours. I stared at a foldable bag and could not touch it, let alone fold it up. There were guards posted at the gates to every compound and I heard a person could be arrested for not having a mask. I had no masks. There were food shortages on every app and even at local markets. In three days, food was completely sold out. I got down to eating a small meal once every two days to ration my food and when I asked my flat mates if they could spare any food, they wouldn’t as they were rationing too. None of us cooked in the main kitchen either. We had a power outage, rent was due, the lease was almost up, I had no money or work and it was the end of my scholarship. No one could take me in for March and without money, I couldn’t stay at a hotel, AirBnB, and no one was couch surfing. My flight was canceled twice with only a third of the amount refunded as my original flight was paid for back in December. I couldn’t reach my family as the internet was down everywhere and my friends were all out of Shanghai. When I could finally speak with my family, they could only talk with me over messenger as they were all strapped for cash as well. I reached out to my school, they gave me an emergency fund of 1000RMB, not enough for rent or a flight. I reached out to the US embassy by email, phone and wechat, getting no response.
Even now, part of me does not find this stressful. Part of me feels I have to find yet one more thing to convince others how stressful this situation was, but then, it’s not a matter of the stress. What I’ve had a hard time wrapping my head around is that this was a horrific experience and this horrific experience happened to me. It is part of my condition to depersonalize and de-realize, big words I have trouble relating with as well. Essentially, no matter knowing that I and me are referring to the same person and feeling that I have a fully intact sense of identity, I still cannot relate with myself. That horrible experience in China did happen to me. But so what?
My experience during the outbreak not only doesn’t sink in, it can’t. It happened and it’s done. My mind, the I and me that I’m aware of, has moved on. My body, the self and me I don’t connect with, is not only stuck in this one experience but in all the experiences like it. This said, the US is now hopefully nearing the tail-end of the pandemic, though with foreign variants, the competition to release better and better vaccines (better hopefully synonymous with effective as is my impression from the media and gossip going around), and a new presidency trying to not only undo the errors of the last but to correct the projection of this country’s state of public safety and welfare, all this makes the future so variable that it has once more, back to times before big data and data models, become unpredictable. In the past, it was a source of pride that I dwelled comfortably in the realm of outcasts and uncertainty. Now, it is just tiresome.
Right now, with this next thought, I’m going to use the words I have come to despise these last few months. “I understand” that there’s a mix of hope, skepticism and fear riddling the emotional fabric of this society. The outbreak started in China and touched every corner of the planet. China has been blamed and shamed. WHO has struggled to unite global efforts and inform the world about this virus, provided a very public, brutish figure in US politics spreading misinformation and undermining their financial base. The US has turned out to be an economic and political disaster with quarantine being contested by people who think the earth is flat, vaccines are dangerous and a senile asshole was championing their cause, despite undermining and even risking their lives in an insurrection, but also by social and civil rights movements filled with people tired of fearing for the lives of their sons, daughters and dear friends, unfortunately allowing less than morally sound individuals to incite riots, break into stores and loot goods from businesses, whether upstanding or not. Medical workers all across the nation, particularly among nurses and aids, have begged people to stay indoors and wear masks, both with and in denial of the fear of dying, killing or watching the dead lie. They are overworked, stressed out and thus vulnerable, and not only does their vulnerability encompass them as individuals but the homes they inhabit, the parents and elderly they keep, and one of the new variants now extends to children, so I’ve heard.
Does this stress you out? I’m sorry that I can’t relate, and I can’t reassure anyone, let alone myself, that things will get better. The only thing that’s certain is that, rather than better, life goes on and this pandemic is part of the life we all share and contribute to, whether we’re law-abiding citizens, upstarts, cheats and con artists, or the regular joe. It may seem without end, but the fortunate and unfortunate thing about the nature of life is that all things do end. The only immunity that exists is the pervasiveness and variety of life’s being. For those that have a faith, the perception and conception of god, or gods, remains, though if you paid attention to my wording, the exact nature of the perception and conception changes. The only things that have no end and can live beyond any particular person or form of life is that which has no inherent life of its own. You and I will die. Our loved ones will die. All things that live will die. However, that’s not consoling. It’s pessimistic, frightening and heartless. I don’t understand that but I can see someone realizing the nature of my words and crying for themselves, for me, for an ailing parent or grandparent, for all of us.
Does this stress you out? If it doesn’t, you might be like me.
