Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

There Is No Back to Normal

2021; Wiley; Volume: 30; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/ntlf.30281

2166-3327

Kelly J. Baker,

COVID-19 and Mental Health

There's a comic I follow on Twitter, Dinosaur (@dinoman_j), about depressed dinosaurs who give each other hope. As someone who suffers from depression and anxiety, I find that the comics eerily match my own experiences of mental illness, especially during the pandemic. The creator of the comics often illustrates what's happening in my head. But lately, I find myself returning to one particular comic. In it, a blue and orange T-Rex is yelling, “Ahhhhhhhhh” over four panels. When it popped up in my feed, I felt a certain kinship with the little dinosaur. I, too, want to scream “Ahhhhhhhhh” as I look at the world around me and figure out how to survive it. Maybe I should scream, but maybe if I start I'll never stop. I don't want to test it out. So, I don't. But I feel that urge to scream, not every day but many of them. I wake up in the morning and brace myself for the day that is about unfold. Will it be stifling monotony? Will it be filled with crises, big and small, which require my already limited bandwidth? Each day is a juggling act of paid work, virtual school, carework and all those other daily responsibilities during a pandemic that is killing people in record numbers. Juggling isn't quite the right word, though. It's more of a series of skirmishes that I seem to lose more than I win. Skirmishes that are part of a battle to keep it together that has gone on for a year. I'm not alone in this battle, and there's a collective weariness that seems to weigh us all down to varying degrees. So, I want to scream. Often, I want to scream about virtual/home school because of how it consumes my family life: endless math worksheets, the glitching videos, the various apps required, and the texts from teachers to let me know that my sixth grader is behind on math again. My kids are weary of it too. They want things to be back to normal. When brick and mortar schools and colleges and universities closed in March 2020, teachers, instructors and professors had to figure out, with no warning, how to transition their classes online and students suddenly found themselves in virtual school, often for the first time. Everyone attempted to do the best they could, but it was hard. And it couldn't last forever, right? Many of us assumed, hoped, it would be temporary. Federal and state lockdowns were supposed to help manage the pandemic and keep the numbers of COVID-19 cases down. By the fall, teachers and students might be back in the classroom. Things, people hoped and said, would likely be back to normal. And so many people wanted that normal to return without wondering if our previous normal was something that we should return to. And yet, the safety protocols varied, and COVID-19 cropped up on campuses, sometimes in large numbers. My children continued to do virtual school because our school system didn't prioritize safety. Masks were recommended, not required. Social distance only happened when it was feasible. So, we kept our kids home to protect them but also to protect those students, teachers and staff who had to return to school. We had a choice. Other people did not. The start of first grade was postponed a week because all the first grade teachers were exposed to COVID-19. Virtual school is a fixture in our lives now. Some things were better in the fall and now the spring. Some things were worse. After months and months of virtual school, we are all hanging on, barely. My sixth grader either diligently moves through her lessons some days or rewrites Disney song lyrics to be about cats. My first grader climbs on the couch instead of watching his reading lesson or draws emojis on his math worksheets instead of solving problems. I answer their questions or troubleshoot assignments while I am supposed to be working but am instead scrolling through Twitter. We continue to struggle with this mash-up of home, work and school that we can't escape. We can only manage it, and some days we can't manage it at all. Occasionally, I find myself putting my fist to my mouth to prevent the scream from erupting from my chest. Some days, I can tell we all want to scream. As I trudge through the days that blur from one into the next, I become more and more frustrated and upset by the people who are trying to return things back to normal, life as we knew it before the pandemic. But we can't get back to our previous normal. It's impossible. We can only live in the pandemic-ridden now, and I want to scream at those who act as if nothing has changed and demand that the rest of us go along with them. We can't return to normal, and I'm not sure we should. We should seek something more humane than we had prior to the pandemic, and now, before we all become that dinosaur who can do nothing more than scream.