The Hunker Games

Photo Credit: Anne Taintor

“I feel like every business is emailing me to say ‘we just want to remind everybody that we don’t sneeze on and/or smear our feces on things ’” my friend said as we attempted to digest the contents of our Saturday morning inboxes. It’s true. Everyone from my therapist’s office to Bank of America has written to tell me about precautions and sanitation practices that I assumed were already in place. Even the yoga studio emailed about it. Namaste only goes so far when shoved up against a cureless virus. My preferred hot yoga seems like a COVID-19 breeding ground now. Something about a room heated to over 90 degrees filled with sweaty humans trying not to fart just screams petri dish to me. But that may be my OCD talking. Either way, I’m listening.

On Friday afternoon, my school and the schools of my children closed down alongside many others in the nation. Although I have actively avoided panicking during this pandemic pause, all the what-if scenarios have created a king tide of anxiety that almost everyone is wading through right now. I, like all people with OCD, have my own special brand of the disorder. I am not obsessed with cleanliness but can, quite easily, get sucked into health focused spirals such as the one happening right now. I have googled enough this morning to now know that cytokine release has been identified as a factor in this virus and, being the ridiculous OCD gal that I am, I know what cytokines are despite the fact that I am JUST A SPANISH TEACHER. Lucky for me and corroborated by my therapist, we OCD folk can be quite good in times of crisis. Why? Because we have been practicing for years and are well-acquainted with fear. I’m aware of all the dangers out there and have been deep breathing through anxiety since I was at least 11. Most who know me have no clue I’m the least bit worried about a damn thing. Now you know what a great actress I can be and all this writing is my close-up. 

This “stay the hell home” directive is not entirely new to me. I once experienced a failed “coup” in Venezuela after which the country came to a halt. It was an eerie feeling living in a country that had hit the pause button, a little too Twilight Zone for my taste. But we managed because we were young and had copious amounts of rum and limes. Now that I am older with more responsibilities, grey hair, and a diminishing IQ, a nation on hold freaks me out. The coronavirus spiral wants me to dance and the generalized anxiety that everyone is expressing right now is the music. Although I acknowledge the seriousness and plan to lure my family into social isolation with enough craft supplies to make a float for the Rose Bowl Parade, I also have to continue the practice of leaning out from the spiral whenever necessary. The news will inform me only so much and monitoring my temperature 50 times a day is foolish. Learning about cytokine response to viruses is interesting but my cytokines are going to do whatever the hell they want to do no matter how much I google. “I survived a coup, I’ll survive this too” I tell myself as memories of a younger badass self float back to the surface. I will hunker down my middle-aged ass with my crazy ass kids and old ass parents (sorry, Mom and Dad, but you old). I might even break out a lime and some rum for old times’ sake. Stay healthy, my friends. But, most importantly, stay the fuck away from one another and let “The Hunker Games” begin. How are you hunkering? I can think of a great publication to subscribe to…. #hunkergames2020 #volunteerastribute

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