Surviving COVID

No, I don’t have COVID. To my knowledge, I’ve never had it, although there’s a part of me that wonders if that month-long “cold” that knocked me on my ass and gave me conjunctivitis at the end of 2019 was really COVID. I’ll never know. At this point, I’m one of the fortunate people who hasn’t gotten it yet and who hasn’t lost someone he knows to this deadly virus. As of today, over 522,000 Americans have died of COVID since it began in this country. This is a shocking, tragic, and unfathomable number. A year ago, Donny Two Times and his Merry Band of Lying, Criminal Dumbfucks were telling us that it was under control.

To say that I’m extremely fortunate by comparison to most people is a severe understatement. I’m privileged, even though I hate that word. I’m in the 2% and have a job that’s allowed me to work from home productively this entire time. I’m divorced, so I was able to split time managing my daughter’s virtual learning and then hybrid learning with Ex. This gave me plenty of time alone to clear my head and manage my stress with activities I enjoy: writing, biking, and binge-watching my favorite shows on Netflix. (Finally, a fucking PERK of divorce!) I now live close to my daughter’s school, so I was able to walk her there when she had in-person learning, which made life feel almost normal for two days a week. I unexpectedly met someone incredible early last year when COVID was just starting, which has had a huge impact on my mental health. More about that later. I was lucky. Really lucky.

My experience with surviving COVID (so far) was probably the optimal experience one could have had with a deadly pandemic. I’m not pretending otherwise. 522,000 of my compatriots are dead. Young, old, and middle-aged. Many of them died alone, surrounded by total strangers. Others had to say goodbye to loved ones on iPhones and iPads. Families are suffering an immense loss that my brain can’t even contemplate. I never thought I would be fortunate to have had my father pass before this, in 2015. At least I had 4 days to say goodbye to him in the hospice. Four precious, incredible days with my family that gave me closure. So many families were deprived of that gift this past year. Some COVID survivors are living with long-term physical effects from the disease. We are all shell-shocked and disoriented from social distancing for a year. It has been an absolutely devastating year.

In spite of my COVID privilege, for lack of a better term, there are lessons I learned this past year, beliefs I confirmed, others I lost, that I want to document for posterity and for my own future reference when the experience of this horrible year (year plus – it ain’t over yet) starts to fade in my memory, like 9/11 has. It’s worth doing while it’s still fresh. So here goes.

Relentless, stubborn, borderline-delusional optimism is the only way to go. As a young lad, I wasn’t what you would call an optimist. I didn’t typically see the bright side of life. I trended toward pessimism. There was always a dark cloud hanging over my head, and I usually expected the worst to happen. I think I got this from my father, who was that way. The man was probably depressed and needed a Paxil. But somewhere along the way to middle age–it’s hard for me to pinpoint when, but it’s definitely accelerated since my divorce–I became an optimist. I changed. I still keep worst case scenarios in mind, but rather than expect them to happen, I prepare my mind for the possibility that they may happen, while devoting my thoughts and hopes to best case scenarios. I hope for, and expect, good things to happen. That things will get better, not worse.

That mentality has served me well during COVID. All year, one of my sisters (who is very much like my father) texted me panicked, worst-case scenarios about COVID, how much trouble we were in, how shit was really bad, how we were all going to die if we weren’t careful, etc., etc., on a nearly daily basis. I understand having this feeling early on, last March and April when we were losing hundreds of people a day in New York. I had it myself, and my ass did pucker for a few weeks when grocery stores started running out of toilet paper and other basics, and began resembling grocery stores from the Soviet Union. I wondered for a while if people would get desperate enough to engage in food riots on a mass scale. Our federal government sure wasn’t doing shit to make things better. But when we started bending the curve in NY in April and into May, and Cuomo (whose star has cratered recently, with good reason) showed leadership and a way out of it in his daily briefings, it boosted morale and my thoughts began turning towards the positive. My sister’s really never have. Her negative texts have died down significantly, but I still get them. We all process our stress differently.

I had another friend who was shitting bricks over a “civil war” that was coming over Donny Two Times and the election. “We’re going to be locked down for 2 years! We’re headed for civil war!” None of those things happened. I mean, we had a little attempted coup in January. That was a bit concerning. But a civil war? No. Democracy held. With paper clips and Scotch tape maybe, but our institutions survived a four-year assault from their greatest threat in my lifetime. If that fucking pig had won again (74 million dipshits still voted for that asshole), well then maybe I would have needed a straight-jacket, but that didn’t happen. We good now.

The lesson for me is that optimism, stubborn optimism, works. It’s better. Positive thoughts, thinking things will get better and the bad shit is temporary, work. Optimism is mentally healthy. Optimism will help you survive and process your worst experiences. It’s not possible every day, obviously. Maybe not every week or month. But the mind can be trained like a muscle to think optimistically. I know it, because I’ve done it. You can still do it and keep Worst Case Scenario in a box at the top of your closet.

The bottom line for me is, what does constantly fearing the worst get me? What does pessimism get me? Nothing. Actually, I’m wrong. They get me a more miserable, depressing, and shitty present. They ruin my daily experience. One of the only things we have control of in our lives is our thoughts. We can decide how and what we think. That’s a powerful weapon at times like this.

Ironically, what helped me remain optimistic this past year are two of the worst things a person can experience in life: divorce and losing a parent. All my losses, actually. Losing Angus. Losing my friends Anne and Matt far too young. Losing my Zio Saverio far too young. The trauma of those experiences and all the learning that came with them have fueled my optimism. It’s perverse when you think about it. One would think the opposite would happen, that I’d be like “It’s all too much, I’m done! Check please!” But no, it’s not like that for me. When you’ve gone through the worst, the bad shit that comes after is way more tolerable. That doesn’t mean that I’m immune to potential future trauma. I’ve seen first-hand parents who lost their daughter young, for example. My mother is still alive. Losing her, my daughter, or either of my sisters, would rip me in half, maybe permanently. But I won’t ruin my present worrying about those things.

Eventually we are all going to die. We don’t get to choose how or when. But we can choose how we want to think about and process and experience that middle line, that dash mark between our birth and our death. That’s what I tried to do during COVID by remaining optimistic and hopeful for the future. Maybe I was, and am, delusional, but who gives a fuck? It’s working.

The little things are beautiful. How many small things did I overlook and not fully appreciate before COVID? How many things have a year of solitude and relative deprivation made me value more than ever before? Here are a few of them:

• A hot shower.
• Toilet paper. Even 1-ply.
• A walk outside. Trees. Grass. Fresh air.
• The maskless face of a stranger.
• Shaking hands.
• A hug.
• A beer and a football game at my favorite sports bar.
• Wearing a suit and tie in court.
• Seeing my sisters and mother in person.
• Seeing my daughter learn in real time.

COVID re-awakened me to the beauty of these simple things. I will try to appreciate them more when this is over, without forgetting the feeling of not having them.

Some risks are worth taking. Risk is inherently personal. COVID exposed this more than anything else in my lifetime. In the beginning, in New York at least, we locked down for weeks because the threat was enormous and we knew very little about the virus or the transmission risk. We were all shitting our pants. So many people were being hospitalized and dying at such a rapid rate, it shocked everyone into an immediate, life-altering change. This heavy, black feeling lasted for a long time.

Then, over the past year, as the infection, hospitalization, and death rates fluctuated, all of us were forced to weigh and balance risk v. reward. Much of our experience depended on where we lived and how truly exposed we were or weren’t. I have friends in New Hampshire, where I grew up, and follow a MAGA sports blogger on Twitter who lives in Maine, who think that people have made too big a deal of COVID and it’s a big conspiracy to control people. My response to this is: “That’s pretty fucking easy for YOU to say, given the depopulated, sheltered area where you live. Come visit Manhattan and ride the subway all day. Breath the air. Touch the poles and then lick your fingers. See how that does you.”

I visited NH in August. It may as well have been another planet compared to New York.

Risk v. Reward. What reward? I can’t speak for others, only myself. I was careful this past year. I always wore a mask while walking on a public street, in a store, or in the hallways of my office on the few days I went in. I have been mostly alone, with close exposure only to Ex., my daughter, my sister and her kids (always outside), and, of course, E. I never got on a plane.

But as the year progressed, I chose to take calculated risks that many others would not have taken. In August, I drove to Boston to meet E. for the first time. We stayed in hotels in Boston and Portsmouth for 5 days. We went to the beach. We ate indoors a couple of times, outdoors the rest. She flew on planes three times to be with me last year. She has more balls than me, God love her, but if she was exposed to something on a plane, I would have had it within 2 minutes of seeing her. So I assumed all of her travel risk too. I saw her again in September, and in October we drove to upstate New York to go hiking. During that trip we stayed in hotels and ate indoors again a couple of times. In November, we both drove to Pittsburgh, meeting halfway from where we both live, to see each other for Thanksgiving. We brought our bikes and biked around the city (which is a pretty awesome place, btw), for a few days. We ate outdoors where possible, but ate indoors again a few times, including on Thanksgiving. And just last week, after an interminable 3-month separation, we met up again and spent two days in New York City, where we stayed in a hotel, rode the subway, ate indoors a couple of times, and visited the 9/11 Museum.

So far, knock on wood 1000 times, neither of us got COVID. We weren’t stupid. Most of the places I mentioned, including New York, were relatively empty, and we wore masks and kept our distance from people as much as possible. In New York, whenever we ate indoors, they took our temperature, address, and phone number, which made us feel more secure about what were doing. It wasn’t a failsafe of course. There was risk involved. We got tested and/or quarantined when we had to, before and after our visits, to mitigate that risk.

Was it worth it?

Fuck yes. Surviving COVID has been about two things for me: (1) Ensuring that my basic needs are met (food, shelter, income); and (2) Maintaining my mental health in the face of a 2 x 4 to the face that no one was fully expecting a year ago. Part (2) was really important. Critical. For me, it meant taking some calculated risks while remaining responsible for the health of the people around me, including strangers. No one had a bigger impact on my mental health and well-being last year than E. Maybe my daughter. But E. was the person I spoke to every day. She was the person who lifted my spirits whenever I saw her on my phone. She was my confidante, my friend, my commiserator. She’s the one who shared my dark humor and made me laugh every day. And she’s the one who always gave me something to look forward to, i.e., seeing her in person again.

This required cultivation. It required effort. It required taking some risks. I’m 52, not 72. I have no comorbidities that I’m aware of, though E. would say that this is only because I never visit the doctor. If I was 72 I probably would not have done what I did (though if I’m as hornt up then as I am now, who knows). I didn’t take these risks stupidly or blindly, or to make some fucked up political statement about “Free-dumb.”

In a year like the one we had, it was really important to have something to look forward to, something to be excited about, something to lift the spirits. Something to live for, to be willing to take a risk for, responsibly. Maybe it was another person. Maybe it was waiting in line to vote to shitcan Donny Two Times. Maybe it was as simple as going to get your hair cut or to a grocery store or to take a walk outside in the fresh air. But we all needed something to expand our risk bubble and make life worth living. For me, that meant seeing E. regularly last year. And it was totally worth the risk.

Retail therapy. Talk about privilege. I’m not proud of this, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit engaging in it last year, or ignored that it helped lift my spirits. Many of my purchases were practical. When it became clear that I was going to be working from home full-time, I got online and bought myself two large monitors for my laptop, computer speakers, and a wireless keyboard and mouse. They were a godsend, honestly. Did I absolutely need them? No, of course not. But they made me more productive and made working from home much easier and less stressful. Then, around my birthday, I splurged on myself by buying a Brompton folding bike and a good pair of Sony wireless headphones. The former took four months to arrive, but has proven to be pure joy for me. I fucking love that thing more than my mountain bike. I’m obsessed with the culture around this bike, the mentality, the take-it-anywhereness, and the upgrades. I’m addicted to YouTube videos about it, including one by this dude who takes this small bike with tires the size of my daughter’s starter bike on long treks all over the world: Italy, South America, the UK, the United States. It’s wonderful escapist fantasy. I think about doing it myself one day. As for the headphones, they’ve proven quite useful when my daughter is learning from home. I don’t have to worry about shutting my office door and losing my WiFi connection, or playing my music too loud when she’s in class. Just throw them on and blast my Night Ranger and Glass Animals and I’m good.

There were little deliveries too. Smaller shit I won’t go into. Oh and let’s not forget that time-sucking PS5 I bought a couple of months ago. I’m fortunate to be able to afford all this. It’s slightly embarrassing, especially when I list all of my major purchases last year in one paragraph. On the other hand, what little social life I had pre-COVID was stolen from me, and I moved to a much cheaper rental last year. This allowed me to save money on rent/going out/dating/eating in restaurants, so I’m still ahead of the game financially. Still. You can’t call me a socialist when I’m buying all this capitalist shit.

Sweat the blues away. Last, but not least, COVID took away any excuse not to work out. We were all locked down and given the opportunity to make our own schedules. I started work each day whenever I wanted and finished when I wanted. I didn’t have to leave my office to go to a gym or work an hour into my lunch hour. I could do it whenever I wanted.

So I did. Not every day. There were weeks I blew it off entirely, especially around the holidays. But I worked out fairly often and always felt good when I did it. Really good. It helped me mentally and physically. And if I’m being honest, the fact that E. is 9 years younger than me and in great shape was quite an effective motivator. Gotta keep up with her ass. Literally.

Most of the year, I relied on Joe Wicks’ YouTube channel to help me work in a 30-minute isometric workout. No weights or equipment required. He’s awesome. Uplifting, motivating, and funny. Every Friday he’d work out in a costume and have his young children come in and do the same. It really lifted my spirits and helped me stay in some kind of shape and feel like I was doing something positive during a really bad time. Of late, and after moving to a bigger rental and taken my shit out of Divorce Storage, I’ve progressed to free weights and a treadmill, which are helping even more.

This is how I survived/am surviving COVID. With Donny Two Times gone, competency back in vogue, and vaccines on the horizon (my mother received her second dose two weeks ago), and the hope of travelling on a plane again this year, I’m more optimistic than ever about the future, even as I continue not to fathom the incomprehensible loss of half a million people who were alive at this time last year.