A couple of nights ago, my husband and I were out walking our dog after dark. After dark tends the best time to walk our dog, who is reactive, because there are less people out walking their dogs. The night was particularly quiet. The usual sounds of traffic had diminished. My glowing light vest and running headlamp lit the pavement in front of us. We were discussing the deep quiet, one of the interesting side effects of the self-isolation protocols during the coronavirus, when my husband asked “Can you imagine what your life would have been like if the coronavirus happened ten years ago? Or when we were in high school?”
“Good god,” I said, “If it had happened while I was in grad school, I would have starved to death.”
Right now, I am so incredibly lucky. I have an income, and a job that I probably won’t lose due to the viral outbreak. I can work from home. Even though much of my husband’s work has been cancelled, and we’re going to be living mostly on my salary for the foreseeable future, we have health insurance. We have a house, and a dog and two cats, and about 400 thousand things to do that we never seem to be able to find the time to do. We’re gardening and cleaning and crafting and projecting and reading like the introverts we are. We can afford food. We can even afford to donate $10 here and there to folks who need it more than us. We’ll manage to get by.
When I was in grad school, I lived alone. I lived in an apartment building that housed three other apartments, in a large complex of identical buildings. I earned just enough money from my teaching stipend that I didn’t qualify for food stamps. But I struggled to pay rent and buy groceries, even after taking out student loans. I spent most of my time teaching, lesson planning, grading, writing, going to conferences, taking classes, and entire weeks would pass where the only people I saw were my students, maybe a colleague. I worked so much that I didn’t know anything about Atlanta until after I graduated, and met my husband, who took me out of my bubble. “You’ve never been here?” he asked again and again, “Haven’t you lived in Atlanta for 10 years?”
If the pandemic had hit while I was in grad school, I would have been isolated. Alone. The stress that I already experienced (like grinding my teeth until they broke. They stayed broken until I got health insurance and dental insurance) would have increased. I probably would have had more migraines. Teaching online would occupy most of my time, and I would have been grateful for that. I would have panicked about money. More than I normally did. I probably wouldn’t have actually starved to death, but I would have eaten terrible, cheap, crappy foods. I wouldn’t have exercised because that wasn’t my outlet then. I wouldn’t have known what to do to release the stress and fear and tension. My mental health would have deteriorated quickly, and I’d have tried to ignore it. I would have read a lot. I think about what it would have been like, and I see myself surrounded with silence. The people I knew then, who turned out to be surprisingly toxic people, were not typically givers. They would have demanded whatever resources I had, whatever attention I had. It’s a pretty bleak picture. Grad school tends veer towards the toxic—something that saddens me deeply (and is a topic for a different post). But I would have written and read and taught, and the work I loved, I would have told myself, was enough to sustain me (even though it wasn’t). And I’d have cried hysterically on the phone to my mother, without examining why.
If the pandemic had hit while I was grad school (or adjuncting) in Virginia, it could have struck when I was living in a gorgeous house with a fantastic friend, or when I was living at my mom’s house, or when I was living in an apartment in the Fan. But during this time, I would have been working in the lab, at the hospital, during second shift, and I would have been essential personnel. All lab employees are essential personnel. I would be teaching online, or taking classes online, and then going to the lab to work. I would probably have worked some double shifts. The stress from working in a hospital lab while also trying to teach online would have been hellacious. When I lived in the Fan, I lived with a guy who flunked out of school from playing World of Warcraft. He also couldn’t work (because he was a student, he said), so I worked three jobs to pay the rent, since he didn’t. (Btw, he’s a professor now. Seriously.) If the pandemic had hit then, I would have broken up with him much sooner (I hope, anyway), and I would have worried, of course, about money, and paying rent and buying groceries. Friends would have helped if necessary. Friends helped out a LOT during this time. And I didn’t always listen (like the ones who told me to dump the guy long before I dumped the guy). I had even less money during this time, but more possible income streams, and a far better and more supportive social network. But here’s the thing. I had a desktop computer, and a flip phone. But smart phones weren’t around yet. Telecommuting wasn’t common. Would classes even have gone online? I piloted an online program around this time, so it would have been possible, but far more difficult to enact. I lived closer to home, and probably would have gone to my mom’s house at least once a week to check in (which I wish I could do now). She worked in a hospital lab, too, so I imagine our social distancing and hand-washing would be exemplary. My parents were divorced, and my father had remarried, and I imagine I would have at least called him. (I’m sure that at some point my father has called me, other than when I was his legal guardian and he called whenever he needed money. I’m sure he called me when I was in college. He must have. Right? Didn’t he? Sometimes he used to call me on my birthday. I know that. He forgot a lot, too. But he definitely used to.) He probably would have been too busy with his new family to care what I was doing. I probably would have been too busy developing poor coping mechanisms to realize that I cared.
But neither of these scenarios come close to what would have happened if I had been in high school. I can imagine no worse period of my life for coronavirus to strike. When my parents were married, and I lived at home, and I had gotten tired of my father’s drunken abuse and insults and manipulation. I had migraines every week. I left the house as much as possible. I smoked a great deal of pot (Sorry, mom) to cope. My friends were my life line. Most people didn’t know how bad my house could be. My dad was charming, and funny, and everyone thought he was great. No one saw when he offered me money to lose weight because I was too fat to be pretty. Or when he told me that the dog was smarter than me. Or when he threatened to hit me because I didn’t understand my math homework. I couldn’t articulate these things, partly because he told us never to tell anyone what goes on in our family. And I was afraid of what would happen if I spoke. I was ashamed of what people would think if they knew how my father saw me—as if everyone would agree with him, and see me the same way. If the pandemic has struck while I was in high school, I would have had no escape. I would have been stuck at home with my father.
I’m not sure what I would have done. Would I have read and written and talked on the phone? Maybe. But my father once ripped the phone out the wall and threw it across the room because he didn’t want to talking on the phone to my friends. Would I have smoked all my pot immediately? (Obviously, yes.) Would I have stayed online, on Prodigy, all night, writing and emailing my friends in other states? Yes, at least until my father grounded me from the computer. But these are all things I did to survive my every day life. I’m not sure what would happen during if the pandemic struck while I was in high school. I just know that my every day life, would have become much, much worse.
And while I’m currently lucky, I know a lot of people out there find themselves in situations that I have been in, and that they are now forced to live in those situations during this pandemic. And I don’t know what I can do to help other than try to describe those situations, so that people can understand, and take those situations into account, when making decisions. And if you’re in one of those situations, hold it. It will get better. Hold on to that. And don’t let go.