My mother-in-law called us yesterday. My partner's great aunt has passed away due to #COVID19. It rattled me, even though I have never had the pleasure of meeting her. How many more family members will we have to bury? How many friends? 1/

The virus has been found in my grandmother's nursing home, on the same floor as she's on. My sister (whose's at very high risk) works as a technician in a hospital. Most of my family/friends are high-risk. I'm scared to lose them. 2/

Meanwhile my other grandmother was partying in the park w. friends all through Easter.

I'm tired. I don't mind the semi-lockdown so much, being an introvert, but this anxiety and constant worry is really starting to break me up. It feels like there's no end in sight. 3/

I suppose the feeling will pass, as such anxiety attacks tend to do. But, yeah... shit's hard. It doesn't help to have the constant flurry of media coverage about how expendable the fat/disabled/chronically sick/old are. 4/

I try to avoid the media as much as I can, but not knowing what's going on is not helpful either. There's a fine balance to media consumption these days, and I don't think I've found it yet. 5/

Sometimes I can trick myself in thinking it's all so far away from us, so I can get some work done. But it really is not. It will hurt and kill those I love, and then all I can think about is how many and who it is I will lose, or will lose me. 6/

And at other times I wake up from with a smile, having dreamt of a dog assembling IKEA furniture.

It is this weird oscillation between normality and the anxiety of impending death and disaster that gets me every. single. time. 7/

But this is not business as usual. This is not OK. This is not fine. 8/

And now I need to trick myself into believing in normality again, because I have a chapter to finish. I hate this. I signed up for a normally challenging #PhDLife, now I get to deal with massive amounts of existential dread on top of it. Not sure how long I can keep it up tbh. 9/

I suppose humans are generally though, we keep calm(ish) and carry on(ish).

But it's scarring us. Mentally, but also physically. My body's slowly starting to deteriorate from the lack of physical therapy. I'm afraid to lose some of my hard-won ability again. 10/

I'm afraid to lose loved ones. I'm afraid that I might die.
This is not normal.

Will probably delete this thread later on once I managed to compartmentalize everything again. Sorry to whine and bother. It's just.. so.. so.. much. 11/11