An Open Letter To COVID-19

Dear COVID-19,

We are holding so much in our hearts and minds. And it’s very hard to grasp what’s going on so deep inside us.

You struck fast and hard. Your spread around the world is scary, reaching 188 countries and territories at last count. Since then, we’re desperately scrolling social media platforms for the latest information and worrying about conspiracy theories. You are an invisible and a powerful enemy hiding in different places. You greatly increase morbidity and mortality over the world and you disproportionately make a higher mortality impact on low-middle income countries. You are the reason of significant economic, social and political disruption, pervasive stress and tension. We struggle to cope and scramble to contain you. We are suffering from anxiety disorders like panic disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder because of constant bombardment of information about you and worse, so much uncertainty. We spend nights tossing and turning around, struggling to unglue from the constant scroll of you. Yes, sleeping is hard when the anxiety level you are giving us is too high. We find ourselves falling into repetitive habits- going to the bathroom 15 times a day to wash our hands; disinfecting impulsively the objects to the extent of doing the same thing over and over again; practicing a lot of impulsive things because we continuously fret about you. The kind of panic settling down on us is really disturbing which makes us all fall prey to anxiety. And it’s difficult to escape the triggers, especially in a world of 24/7 rolling news and social media storm. The more consistent we wake up in the middle of the night, the more consistent our bodies and minds function and the more we start to understandably worry about the things we hear everywhere, compulsively checking the news, ruminating over what will happen in the future, or mentally reviewing about the excessive speculative reports about you. Some of them are fake news and advice. Like many others, who have a prior history of anxiety disorders (obsessive-compulsive and panic disorders) find that the symptoms have been exacerbated by the news about you. The fear of contagion pushes us into behavior that exacerbates anxiety. Our thoughts become an endless stream of “what ifs” and “hows.” What if this outbreak continues and will be at the forefront of our everyday lives? How do we sustain an additional sacrifice in life for an extended period of time? What if we lose our jobs? How are we going to buy foods on empty spaces? How do our kids go to school every day? What if the doorknob we hold has a corona virus on it and we are going to die after that? What if our lives will not be saved in this pandemic? What if the restrictions will never be lifted at all and will cause anxiety to us forever or will affect the whole society? And what if once the lockdown and restrictions will be gradually loosened or lifted and the more anxiety hits us- the fear of having more and more exposure to virus as larger gatherings or reopening of establishments takes place? These obsessive unknowns go round and round in our heads continually and the raging wave of anxiety that sweeps us is unlike anything we’ve felt before because we suppose these questions are the cases on the basis of probability.

Honestly, we are trying our very best to limit the time we spend on social media and news outlet. We are trying to give our “mental space” for other things. We mute keyboards on social media but all these do not really work well. We still read news about you in each moment. We tend to keep these mixed emotions during the day but they burst out in the dark as we fall asleep at night and feed us a cycle of these aforementioned disorders. There are times when we skip one night of shut-eye, thinking of you, invading our bodies and all that’s left for us to do is to sit at the corner in our rooms and brace an unimaginable impact. There are mornings when we wake up, our minds are spinning in all kinds of horrible directions that knock things down. And there are times in-between when we feel that we don’t have enough information to accurately predict the future with you.

You are an horrible unknown player, do you know that? You spread like wildfire with no end in sight. You are our personal nightmare but even how crazy you scare us, we are still allowing our souls to breathe and whisper a silent prayer to forgiveness and healing of our world. We don’t have an immense amount of confidence that when tomorrow comes, all is well or this too shall pass. And for now, more than ever, we need to keep our mental health in a good condition as possible. We don’t want to curl up into a ball and have ear problem or sinus problem where it feels like there’s a balloon being blown up in our faces. We don’t want to feel the pain of an ice pick that stabs our bodies. We don’t want to get sick and get quarantined with you for long, lonely days. We don’t want to have so much OCD and panic disorders around you. We want to live a normal life like we always did.

Our hearts are breaking as we witness the fall-out from your effects to the world. It is difficult pretending that everything is fine but we still live. Yes, we are taut and fearful. Our minds are racing; dire thoughts are rushing unchecked through our heads. We want to live. We still have so much things to do, so many plans to make and ideas to share. Our lives matter. Our lives are worthy. Our lives are valuable. We sincerely hope that you stay away from us as soon as possible and so, may we now bid goodbye to you that we may celebrate the victory over you. We don’t want to feel you again- not today, tomorrow or next, next years to come.

From the whole human race