For the fifth time this year, the world is ending. Week 1, 2020: embers were still cooling in the Amazon when, on the other side of our planet, flames engulfed Australia. The US assassinated an Iranian general, setting off anxieties about a new World War. Then: the global economy reeled from collapse, bloodshed tore through Delhi’s streets and now, while relief workers were still finding shelter for bereaved families, every news event sits overshadowed by a pandemic unfurling its death cloud around our globe. Those of us who have homes are locked in them, glued to screens broadcasting the worst of it — suddenly out-of-work families walking for days toward the promise of shelter and safety and food and water, let down by the cities and leaders they hung their dreams on. One video shows a family sitting on the floor eating grass for a meal.
(Forgot to breathe? Same. Drop your shoulders, unclench your jaw. Follow an exhale out.)
Things are so bad, you want to hold your head in your hands but — cruel twist — you aren’t allowed. Touching your face is cancelled.
My phone tracks my screen-time and I’m averaging 7 hours a day. Tasked with sitting home, helpless against the pandemic, I’ve nonetheless read innumerable articles and WhatsApp forwards and tweets about it. (There’s new slang for this inability to look away from apocalyptic news-feeds: ’doom scrolling’.) I seem to know, without wanting to, what all the world leaders have said, what celebrities have said about the leaders, how journalists feel about the celebrities, and how my aunts feel about all of it. Stress is terrible for immunity; a fact that is extraordinarily stressful.
This is what it’s like, we’re all learning, to live through the writing of those grim sentences in history books — the sentences with death-tolls in them. You mourn in big ways, you ground yourself with little things. Everything about everything changes and, in defiance, you make your tea how you’ve always made your tea. You huddle in with the people you love, make sure everyone’s eating, then you all squint and try to piece together the new shape of Normal.
