The (Pandemic) Time Warp
"Madness takes its toll." Did the pandemic age you? An open thread...
Readers,
This week I was struck by something filmmaker David Licata wrote in his Oldster Magazine Questionnaire:
“Before 2020, I felt about 40 years old. But the pandemic did a number on me and now I feel about my age”—his age being several weeks shy of 62. That means that on some level, Licata has aged about twenty-two years in three. That is some accelerated aging.
While the math of it is staggering, what Licata said resonated with me. Although, in my case, it feels as if the pandemic time warp has cut both ways: as if I’ve both aged and regressed since March, 2020. Now I want to hear about how it’s affected you, your sense of time, and your sense of aging.
A global pandemic sure can warp time. Sometimes it feels as if the past 39 months constituted one long-ass year. My memories from all that time under varying degrees of shelter-in-place all seem to run together. With the exception of the early days—when we were erroneously instructed to forgo masks so there’d be enough for hospital staff; when we mistakenly believed it was useful to disinfect our groceries with alcohol wipes—it’s difficult to distinguish which things happened during which Covid wave or surge or variant, or year.
All the worrying and isolation and grief and illness have definitely taken a toll on me, physically and mentally. I saw it coming; I remember being so scared in those first months of lockdown that my limbs sometimes shook uncontrollably at night in bed. When I wasn’t panicking about the imminent dangers, I was panicking about more long-term ones; I often thought, This constant anxiety is going to make me older than my years.
And now I think maybe it has. In the wake of the past three years, my joints are achier, I’ve got more wrinkles, my hair is grayer, and I’ve lost more of it. I’m exhausted all the time, yet so anxious still that I have difficulty sleeping through the night.
I mean, I don’t know—maybe that’s how my aging was going to go, no matter what. It hasn’t been a scientific experiment by any means, but it does feel like I aged faster during this time than I have at any other.
On the flip side, I feel as if I’ve lost most or all the social skills I’d acquired over 57 years. Many of my friendships have lost their natural rhythm. I’m simultaneously desperate for socialization and anxious about pursuing it, like a toddler who tries to hide behind her mother’s legs. Scheduling plans (and often rescheduling them, because things come up, and we’re all bad at this now) feels tedious, and sometimes just the thought of trying to get things going with other people wipes me out.
All that said, I still feel like a Matryoshka doll, housing all the different versions of myself from different ages. Menopause and arthritis and pandemic-borne weariness be damned, my inner 10/11-year-old is alive and well, still kicking around inside of me.
So, yeah, I get what Licata was saying. Time was always kind of warpy for me, but during the pandemic, it got even warpier. How has it been for you? Tell me in the comments.
PS I feel compelled to note here that the pandemic isn’t exactly over. We’re now in a time of greater freedom of movement, when there are more situations in which it feels safe to gather with others, and I am glad for it. But contracting Covid remains a risk, especially for those who are older, immunocompromised, or disabled, and there are people suffering with long Covid.
PPS I’d thought about a holiday-related post like I had at this time last year, but I’m too disgusted by the Supreme Court this week and too worried about the fate of our democracy to go in that direction today.
Hope you all have a nice weekend anyway!
-Sari
I don't feel it aged me, I feel it robbed me. When you're retired and in good health, these are the years you want to spend traveling, take these long breaks to discover other places and people, and that got taken away for about 2 years. On the other hand we did road trips that we probably wouldn't have done otherwise. And I joined writing classes and workshops (online) to satisfy the need to get in touch with people. I wouldn't have been so active in social media, networked so much with other writers without the isolation. And as a result, I wouldn't have found new magazines to submit to and be published (a lot). This isn't making lemonade from lemons. Maybe I would have done all these things anyway, but the crisis gave me a kick in the behind (and removed distractions, lol!). Pushed me. You can't wallow in fear. You gotta move.
I feel that it changed me, not that it aged me. In some ways, it seemed like another thing thrown into the mix of awfulness that had become part of my life under Trump. So many, many ugly things were made visible in that time (and still in this time) that the pandemic seemed another madness heaped on top of that awfulness. I remember Larry McMurtry and Oliver Sacks saying that aging made them less tied to the politics of the world, but that has not happened to me. I still feel gut-wrenched and now even more pessimistic about our country moving in a positive direction. I mean, if you can't get people to watch out for each other during a major health crisis--or at least agree that one is happening when a million people died of it--then what does that say about our capacity for a democracy that looks out for the little person? I mean, I was afraid during the pandemic (nights were the worst; my husband would say "let's get out and drive around for a while" and I would say "for what? to look at everything that is now closed to us?" It would just make me more depressed). And then my mother, who was pretty vital at 81, had Covid and then a stroke, and she is just not the same person she was before all that, and it's made me afraid.
Some of my pandemic depression has lifted, but not a whole lot of my cautiousness about other people and places has. I still won't go to most places where crowds congregate, including movie theaters (we had a shooting at one in my city in Lafayette, LA, and I just don't trust people in crowds of that size; I decided to teach online, too, because with all the school shootings, I figure it's just a matter of time before one happens at mine--everyone seems to want to solve their problems with guns). Anyway, not what you asked entirely, but maybe the pandemic and everything around it did age me, though I don't like the idea that "aging" and "pessimism" or "realism" go hand in hand. I do know I am a lot more afraid, and maybe that's part of aging, too.