Hey Google: Is denial a symptom of COVID-19?

Written and illustrated with love.

The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind, said Einstein. After being forced into a 4-weeks quarantine of nausea, coughing, chest pain, disillusionment, anger and terrible homesickness, my isolation helped me find the way back to writing. Given the fact that I could neither leave the house for some photo walks, nor could I sing, I had to deal with what was in power to do. I was (and I am still) bored to death. Caught alone with my thoughts and emotions in one of those typical, tiny Stockholm-apartments. I stay home, because I feel responsible, not because I have to. Our strategy here is based on self-responsibility. However, everyday I see excited crowds of people outside. All age groups, happily shaking hands, hugging and sharing their germs with a plucky cough straight towards the others face. Sometimes I wonder if I’m doing something wrong by sitting here alone and isolated. Sometimes I have to remind myself that we are facing a world wide pandemic, about which we know that it is infectious before noticing any symptom. About which we know that it may kill our parents and grandparents, as well as our peers with weaker immune systems no matter which age. About which we know that it has severe effects on multiple organs including the brain, and that the current number of infections roughly reflects the death number in 3-4 weeks. About which we - still - know nothing...

It triggers feelings we want to shut away like we have been shut away.

I feel uneasy, disillusioned and tired. I feel bored. We all do. Boredom… that’s when we have feelings of dissatisfaction, restlessness, and weariness all at once. It's a state we want to avoid. It tears us between sadness, rage, and loathing as well as its ugly siblings remorse and contempt - What a distasteful, strong cocktail! It triggers feelings we don’t want to feel, feelings we rather deny. It triggers feelings we want to shut away like we have been shut away. Shut away to protect others; Shut away to protect ourselves. Shouldn't we be the experienced ones in handling this? After all, we are masters of shutting down our difficult emotions to protect our inner child, and the others around us from seeing our true self. Aren’t we the champions of denying our feelings until they devour us sooner or later? And, isn’t our out-of-control eating currently painting a clear picture of how our banned feelings eat us up from within? Deep down we know how a shutdown functions, don’t we? Who if it’s not us, who can manage the denial once again for the sake of taking a classy drink in the sun with boredom's cooler cousins joy and excitement? We can head over to where they live - on the other side of town - and leave everything behind. The winter has been cold…

How dare they force us to self-control…

We only need to get over there. How bad can it be? It’s probably not worse than the flu...we're not in the risk group...it will work out...oh wait will we meet people on the way? Yes....but it's just a few...it's their fault if they don't protect themselves…We are used to this freedom. We are used to the instant gratification, the dopamine-Microdosing. We want it whenever we crave it. We need it. Now! We are so used to it, that we refuse to see the consequences, and consequently bury our moral in one of the mass graves with the people sacrificed for a "higher purpose". How dare they want to tell us it's not possible to go out and party? How dare they force us to self-control? How dare they leave us back - alone and locked away - with the withdrawal symptoms...Hey Google! Is denial a symptom of COVID-19?

We won't answer. We can't.

The isolation seems to hold a mirror up to us. It’s uncovering who we really are. Pure and self-responsible for our previous cowardness. Responsible for our lack of coping strategies that is about to catch up with us. Responsible for and finally aware of the opportunities we missed. Oh dear, boredom is unpleasant. It makes us angry and frustrated. It makes us overeat and do things we know we will regret. It makes us indifferent and lets us procrastinate. It confronts us, terrors us, with the desires we have shut away for such a long time. We have to make a living, right? Be someone, but most of all not be without someone. How dare they forbid us seeing the people we’ve never visited before? But don’t you dare to steal our independence or question our choices. We won't answer. We can't. We can pin a speech bubble sticker on a selfie, but we’ve never learned to be responsible - to actually respond - in real life. What do you expect? Please don’t make us feel vulnerable. We will defend our grounds. We will offend and degrade to not feel so low… or simply to entertain our bored minds. We will justify it with our freedom of opinion. That's the only thing we know - our rights. We never talk about our duties. We deny them as we are used to do it with everything that feels uncomfortable. How often have we been "too busy” to meet a much-valued friend? And how often did we say "Let's meet soon"? How often did we sabotage our priorities for the delusion of productiveness and fame? It was us who did not spend time with our loved ones. It was us who have lost track of our relationship status. It was neither the Coronavirus nor the government, the penguins nor 5G. It was us....We are not angry about others. We are disappointed in ourselves. We are angry that we have wasted time, that we lack the chance to do these things now, and that it's going to be exhausting. Now that we don't know if we or our loved ones get out of this sh** alive, we understand what should have been prioritized in the past. It was us and we have to face it. But… at least we get a new reason to drink another glass of our denial cocktail. How dare you shame to show up at our party? We didn’t miss you needy little bastard.

we know, a tiny spark would ignite a devastating fire of helplessness and despair

Oh dear, boredom is unpleasant. It lets some very uncomfortable feelings through the open shutters. Feelings and thoughts which we would usually shut away by keeping ourselves busy. We are used to keeping ourselves so engaged in the rat race, that we know, a tiny spark of solitude would ignite a devastating fire of helplessness and despair. A fire that has never been extinguished, not least because we failed to do so. We thought we were capable of keeping it under control. We are capable of everything. Isn’t that what we were told? Isn't that what we - the snowflakes and superheroes - are expected to be capable of? We were so sure about it. We even accepted to deceive our instincts with an omnipotent pretentiousness of control. We try to protect ourselves so much from emotional traps, that we fail to see how much we've been gaslighted into submission already. Oh dear, boredom you make it so easy. Our cravings for intimacy are so strong these days. We would blindly follow everyone who sugarcoats us into denial. We need to feel special, no matter the consequences. After all, we've never learned what consequences are. We don't want to. We have our strategies, we will always find evidence to support our choice. Nobody can criticize us for that. Too much information, too little time. Too little competence. We will drink that denial drink with our cousins once again. It’s all fine as long as we don't have to feel those scary feelings. As long as we don't have to feel at all. It’s sick…

So, what about a candid, unfiltered look IN the mirror?

We chose the easy way out. We tend to ignore that our emotions - especially the scary ones - have a very special task. They regulate our behavior. They direct our attention. They determine our perceptions, our interpretations - our memories. All together they organize our life. They help us separate important from unimportant, loving from abusive, ethical from deceitful - right from wrong. Our emotions motivate and guide us. No emotion, no motivation. But, to me, it seems as if we can’t handle this energy after years of boring out. We need to understand and handle our emotions in their full spectrum. So, what about a candid, unfiltered look in the mirror? What if the boredom that terrors us, instead promotes our true interests. What if it tries to reach us, to shake us and wake us up. What if it wants to keep in touch with us to make us aware of what we care about deep down. Boredom is creative. Boredom is informative. Boredom teaches us something about ourselves and about the world we are living in. It shows us that our situation does not meet our expectations and desires. That something is unfulfilling and not challenging enough to grow. Boredom reminds us to take care of our underlying goals, our interests, our health. We need to practice resilience. We need to commit to enduring this daunting feeling of boredom as we commit to a workout or diet routine. And if we keep up our imagination and confidence to try out new ideas, then we are likely to learn from this situation, instead of projecting our dissatisfaction on others. There's no need to serve our inner troll if we just try to concentrate on what is our role and what is in our power right now. Is it realistic to change something with our actions or reactions? Or do we instead act to calm our fears, our anger, and denial?

It will be scary at first to have these thought processes. If we can't deal with ignorance, know-it-alls, disrespect etc. we are free to leave the situation. We need to face, understand and accept our potential disillusionment and move on. It's hard. It's exhausting. It's expensive. But we can free ourselves from our superhero-cuffs. Even if we feel unable to do big moves immediately, we can reflect achievable options in the close future. It helps to bring back control and clarity. The felt frustration about others is often just rooted in the anger about ourselves. How could we allow ourselves to be so blind? How could we navigate ourselves in such a situation? Why did we not foresee this? We had an insight and now we want to prevent others from our mistakes. Yet, we ignore their reality and boundaries. That's what we need to practice, too. After all, do we not want others to embrace us who we are and with our boundaries, too? I think today is about self-control and empathy… Why would people react like they do? What's their background? How might their lives until now have looked like? Where do they come from? Why are they engaging here? And most of all, what can I learn? Let us approach the crisis with a learning mind: We do not fail, we win or we learn! Boredom gives us the signal that we’re spending our time in a suboptimal way and that we should rather be doing something more meaningful. It’s our responsibility to figure out what is missing, and we won’t figure it out by engaging in meaningless trolling or denying our situation completely. Conquering creativity can disrupt our lives and it scares our threat-sensitive brains. It's normal, but let us make an effort to understand our emotions and motivations a bit better. Let us recognize our boredom as creativity and build something beautiful from it.