June 10 - COVID Anxiety

As the province and the country begin a relaunch program after the scariness of COVID 19, it is only now that I am having some feelings of anxiety. In the early months of lock down, I kept busy. I found lots of little projects around the house to keep me occupied. Indeed, I am still busy with some of them. My sister in Australia tells me that people in Sydney often refer to these as iso projects – things that people are doing during their home isolation.

Anyway, I have kept busy over these last couple of months. I certainly haven’t been bored. I have kept in phone and email contact with friends and have even had driveway coffee with some of them. So why is it now that I have these feelings of anxiety?

I suppose in a way, these feelings are similar to those I had when I first stepped out on my own after my initial vision loss. The relaunch of phase 1 after the coronavirus is similar in some ways to my personal relaunch into a world of limited sight.

My sight loss was sudden and I didn’t have the special skills I needed to function in a world that was geared to people who could see. I remember the first few times I set out with my white cane. Walking around the block on my own was a huge adventure. I would plan my route before leaving the house. I would try to imagine what I would do if I encountered anything out of the ordinary. I was often filled with anxiety but would feel an inordinate sense of accomplishment if I completed these little adventures successfully.

Now as a society, we are beginning to set out into a new way of doing things. There are masks, gloves and plexi glass screen dividers. We are still to keep our physical distance from others. I can cope with all of this but then there are the markings on the floors of buildings telling us where to stand and walk. How will I be able to manage this? From what Lyle tells me, the arrows are large and I should be able to see them. I don’t know yet. I haven’t been in our local grocery store since the beginning of March.

This is the cause of my anxiety. It is a vague fear of the unknown. I need to gather again the resolve I felt all those years ago when I first ventured out as a partially sighted person. This will just be another challenge. I’m not sure when the time will be appropriate but I know that I will need to gather those same skills of preplanning my adventures outside of my house. Like others who might be feeling similar feelings of anxiety, I will need to gather my courage and learn how to encounter this new challenge so that we can all survive in this new reality.