Mental States of Last Resort

A look back on five years since the lockdowns, and a long-developing sense of sanity.

Just about five years ago, my daughter had her last day of preschool. I had my last day in the office. It was the beginning of the Covid-lockdown period, which no one is eager to recall.

It would take about six months for her to get back into a classroom and more than two years for me to return to an office.

My last day in the office was a Wednesday. I was never a big germaphobe, but my wife was six months into a hard pregnancy, and I decided that I could work from home. That Monday, my daughter’s preschool went remote.

The days that followed were full of dread, self-deception, double talk and uncertainty. Most of the white-collar world decided that what they did wasn’t worth getting sick over. Some slick white-collar cog like myself decided to call everyone else essential instead of expendable. No one knew if that would hold. In some neighborhoods, workers-from-home clapped once a day. I remember a lot of Amazon delivery trucks and blue rubber gloves on the sidewalks.

Five weeks later, my job was eliminated. I had to replace a lot of income with freelance work, quickly. At that moment, my wife’s due date was seven weeks away. The news was full of stories about hospitals being overrun, enough to make us wonder if there would be open beds for deliveries.

My wife was under a lot of physical, emotional and mental stress. My daughter, then four years old, could no longer see her friends. None of this was the end of the world, but it wasn’t easy.

What I could I do was find work and stay calm. The second one was not natural to me, but in the confines of our apartment, it was extremely important. Those months amounted to the latest and largest step I’ve had to take as an individual towards something that looks like sanity.