PTSD in a pandemic 1 (COVID-19 in Australia): Impact of childhood trauma

I am not one of the ones stripping supermarket shelves, driven by COVID-19 panic.  I am one of the ones pressed small into a corner of an empty room in a silent house.  One of the ones already broken inside, who now cries every day.  And rocks to drown that complex PTSD induced screaming in my head. 

My own screams.  A memory.

Traumatised by those empty shelves, I am cling-wrapped with fear – disproportionate to the actual threat, some suggest, their comments off-target.  It is the unexplainable fear – that secret older one which makes this virus so dangerous for me. 

COVID-19 is simply a mutation of the fear which is already inside me. 

A new fear twisted with old – impossible to separate.  I flash here, I flash there.  Present to past:  Empty Coles shelves.  Teenage hunger.  Home quarantine.  Summer holidays shut up in that childhood house.  Waiting, in fear.  A wait which never ended. 

So, virus-threatened, my home is no longer safe, blanked out by the memory of that other house. 

Home isolation would destroy my mind.  Hospital? 

Even worse, all those masks hiding possible/probable rage-filled mouths. 

My fear is logical-illogical.  Smothering.  PTSD logic.

So, I am not one of the ones making jokes on Facebook.  COVID-19 is human to me, entering Australia just like the anticipation of dad entered a room.  His invisible, very real and impending menace filling the air.  And my lungs.  Am I short of breath?  Yes, no, maybe.  Is it from the past?  Or is it from now?  How would I know if I got sick?? 

I don’t need one of those elusive masks – I would have no idea when to use it, that same smothering atmosphere wherever I go.

Like dad, COVID-19 knows where I am, doesn’t need to rush.  And it’s that doesn’t-need-to-rush combined with the news-changing-by-the-hour-is-this-HIM-has-HE-arrived? which makes it so horrifying.  The drawn-out anticipation of harm dotted with left-field too fast societal changes.  Not sure how bad it will be, not sure when or how it will hit.  I don’t cope well with change, nor uncertainty.  So, I am one of those ones checking the news 20, 000 times a day.  How can I not? 

It is like listening for dad’s boots on carpet.  Striving to be that one step ahead.  

Trying to follow ever changing instructions, the governmental “do do/don’t do” is drowned by bits of my past awoken by this dad-virus:

 “Wash hands, avoid disease”.  It’s logical.  And a reminder of that secret dirt which will never come off me – not as a 10-year-old, and not now – no amount of Happy birthdays sung over a tap or alcohol gel will move it.  Nothing will.  I know, my sibling tried it.  With bleach.  Now as I scrub and scrub at this new dirt, I remember his fingertips to elbows peeling.  And that I cannot keep anyone safe from this virus.  Not even the people I love.

Then.  “Don’t shake hands, avoid disease”.  The instruction inevitably prompting inventive waves, and pats on the back – those patting/waving hands moving towards me unpredictably.  Making greetings suddenly suspect, and throwing my normal jumpiness into overdrive.  Handshakes are predictable.  So are high fives.  Pats and waves are not.  

Conversely, the “social distance” rule, is just as bad. 

A memory of the loneliness of watching other people hug, and a 10-year-old who knows she is too dirty for gentle touch. 

It is logical.  Necessary.  All of it.  But this new societal focus on hands and personal distance, is an achingly hard one for me. 

I need “normal” and “stable” in a world which no longer is.  Mixing PTSD and instability is like pouring kerosene on fire.  Adding grief is like stoking it all with a strong southerly wind.

Locked in my this-will-go-on-forever distress, I pray for:

Kindness.  Understanding.  Compassion.  Consistency.  Routine.  Calm.  Safety.  And as I struggle not to disappear inside myself, someone who remembers (and cares) I exist.  Not like before, when people walked away from a desperate 10 and 14 and 18-year-old, pretending not to see.  A safe person walking with me hand-in-hand.  That’s what I need.  So I’m not stumbling alone with a terrifying menace which walks hand-in-hand with dad. 

Yes, I am exploding.  Yes, I am crying.  And flapping my hands.  And rocking.  And needing a hug.  Will I survive this virus?  Physically, probably.  Emotionally?  Fear and grief harm, especially when it is a complicated tangle of new and old in a head already smashed, struggling to navigate a world which has always seemed hell bent on destroying me.  And now, in my beaten down child-adult brain, I wonder – Will this go on forever?

Forgive me.  I am trying to get through.  But. 

The fear – it is worse this time because I have lived through this before. 

Written March, 2020; revised July, 2020