It came…
The realization of my greatest fear – restrictions, fear, panic, not knowing all information, confusion. Just to describe to you my whole fear, only thing that’s missing is people shooting outside and us running to the woods, hiding and being afraid of our own shadows. Although the directions are exactly the opposite of my greatest fear – stay home, don’t go out – all other emotions are present. Although most of the time I do not want to admit that I am in a panic and that I am really scared. Somehow I think this text will be full of the word fear, but it’s a major emotion.
It is caused by everything else:
– Not knowing all information – information are not spreading like a wildfire. At least not the correct ones. However, there is a lot of bad information from people who I guess have only one happiness in life and that’s spreading fear and panic. I have to filter every piece of information I read, look from who and when and where was it published because I don’t fully trust it. They say we have to be more critical in life, so …. here, mission accomplished. I am critical like a crazy person. Especially when I hear information from my friends and colleagues who are working in different areas and on different levels of receiving information. Some find out sooner and some later. I examine all my life choices immediately, and not only received informations. I try to react meaningfully, but the whole situation is so new that I don’t even know what makes sense. Then I go back to the basics, take care of yourself, the people in your area, see if you can do something useful without putting others in jeopardy and following the instructions given by the state. I know, they did not deserve that. To follow them and nod on everything they say, but somehow I hope and I need to believe that they are right about staying home and not unnecessarily being exposed to the virus. Anyway, I’m pretty selfish, I wouldn’t want the virus to touch me even on a meter, because years of watching movies that dealt with similar topics left a mark on me, and maybe there is a place in my brain that filters the whole situation through the door “Conspiracy theories – Covid 19 ”.
– Panic – knowing myself pretty well over the last few decades, I know I’m a panic. Uh … I’m a big panic. In my body is the energy that I feel and that has a life of its own. Just not to rush out because I don’t let her show up for a second. And she knocks and searches and like thousands of butterflies fly through my body, which in a moment leads me to madness. I have to exclude myself more and more often. Before, it would only be when the stress was too great for that moment, so I would stare at one point and let my mind and body calm down, return to normal, but now, the shutdown is constant and I am not able to control it most of the time. But the vicious circle is not over. For me, situations like this are like seven rounds of hell. Although my body panics and I feel some completely new stages of panic in my body, my brain struggles to show none of it. Throughout life, I have learned that I must be the strongest, the one who will endure everything, who will make everything better. The one available because my emotions can come to light later when there will be no more concentration of danger. Later, when everyone will recover from the past, I will relive what was supposed to be over. Since I know all this and am aware of how I react and how I behave, I lock myself into a circle of panic and hold myself in a spasm until my whole situation is normal. Then my body and my brain will exist in harmony until the whole situation has passed.
– Restrictions – a month ago I knew I was going on a one week vacation. And I almost cried of misery because for a really good vacation, one week is not enough. Two weeks are not enough, not only one. Now I see how wrong I was. Now, one week sounds perfect. What does that mean? That means that in that one week I can go where I want, when I want and with whom I want. I planned to go to two birthdays, to Zagreb with my friend and to Varaždin with my boyfriend. I planned to be free. Situation at this moment is that I am home at least 30 days and I want to cry again because I know I can’t go anywhere and what’s even more important, I don’t wanna go. As I said earlier, I don’t want the virus touches me so I don’t wanna go anywhere. I am at home, watching myself and my family. Restrictions are not here to take our freedom of life and to destroy our will to live. They are here to save our health and life, ours as others too. And that we need to take that seriously. Very seriously.
I believe that most of us has saw many challenges. We all deal with them in a unique ways. We all want to overcome bad conditions in our lives so that our lives can be better. This virus is nothing more than one more challenge in our lives. We need to stop for a moment, without getting in the loop of panic and fear and ask ourselves what does staying at home mean to us. For me it means I can finally watch all movies and shows that wait for months. And I will watch them without feeling guilty. I will clean my balcony where I store all the things that can be outside for 9 months. I will organize my documents because I don’t have boxes to store them and I was too lazy to put them in the place. I will make a plan to have my garden which I will plant next year. Maybe, but maybe I will go to the basement and clean it too. I don’t know it 30 days will be enough for that. I will bake cakes and hang out with my boyfriend. This is an opportunity to get to know each other better and that scares me and makes me happy at the same time.
For the first time in my life I will make on of my life dreams to come true and I will learn how to play music instrument, mandolin. That part of my dreams will not stay in rubric “Who knows, if I tried, maybe I would be perfect in it”. Actually, if I don’t think about the reasons about why I am at home, I really look forward to it. I believe we all have many things we like to do at home, but we postpone them because of dynamic of our lives. This is now an opportunity not to only save lives of other people, but to stop postponing thing and do them.
Look out for each other. The reality is that we are no longer responsible only for ourselves, but also for others who are near us whether we like it or not. Listen to what your country says. The more we stick to the rules, the sooner it will be over. No one is taking our human rights, we are just given the rules which will save ours and lives of other people. And learn, this might not be the last situation like this. The better we learn how to act in crises, the better we take the next, the same or similar.
p.s. Use social networks i hang out that way. There is no better time to test all those lovely technology then now.
Željka, croatian care leaver
