Image: Pexels Are you getting Coronamotional? Oh babe, so are we all. Chances are, you’re either in one of the following stages, you have been in one, or you are about to be…
Welcome to the seven stages of Coronamotions you are likely to have in this pandemic.
The One Where Everything Is Totally Fine
Remember those long-ago early days of Coronavirus jokes? The thoughts and prayers and hashtags we all sent to China and Italy before we had that sinking, gut-wrenching realisation that this was not someone else’s problem, but ours too? Ah, denial. Good times.
Because this all feels like one very long episode of Black Mirror, denial is very easy to slip into. Sometimes it's comforting to return to it when everything gets just that little bit too scary. You can tell yourself: no, I am not under house arrest, I’m at a wellness retreat that just happens to look like my tiny studio flat. No, I am not using my annual leave pretending my bathtub is that pool I was meant to be in in Puglia, I’m totally still going abroad in June.
A daily dose of denial can brighten our mood, just don’t stay there too long.
The One Where Everything Makes You Really, Really Paranoid.
“Did that woman in Waitrose sneeze on me?,” “What if the post puts Coronavirus through my letterbox?”, “Do I still have my sense of smell?”, “I saw my grandma fourteen days ago and now my throat is tickly...have I given it to her? Have I killed grandma??”
Panic, guilt, more panic. This Coronamotion is what makes food shopping feel like queuing for the portaloos at a festival. In fact, you’ll have literally all the same thought processes; is it too late? Will I make it in time? Will I catch something nasty once I’m in there?
This typically follows prolonged exposure to one of the following: the news, twitter, an email from your conspiracy theory friend Angela, more news, a text from your Boomer parents which reads: “had wine with Marge from next door- she just had a small cough, don’t know what all the fuss is about.” You can also bring on your own panic by having a burst of denial. If you thought “what the hell, this is just seasonal flu, right?” and went for a walk in the park with a pal, prepare yourself for a solid hour or two of “what have I done?
Save yourself the drama. Stay home. Mute twitter.
The One Where Everything Really P****s You Off
When denial fades, anger is quick behind. Sometimes it's the bursting of that delicious bubble your denial gave you. You’ll have cries of “WTF do you mean I can’t go to Puglia?” and “I thought my fortress of hoarded toilet paper would save me!” Everything and anything, from your Zoom call freezing to your endless hand-washing, will tick you off. Self-isolation will start to feel like you have your period every day. You will want to smash things, scream into a pillow or at those kids on your street who seem to be having a party in the park. When you do scream at them, you’ll sound like a mad old lady shaking a walking stick at “the youth.” Lean into this. It could be as cathartic as that brief moment you thought you were still going to Puglia.
The One Where Everything Is Really, Really Sad
After you’ve screamed at your cat/pillow/local teenagers/partner/Ocado delivery man; the sadness kicks in. These are the moments when you convince yourself that everyone will die, the world is ending and you’ll be left all alone. You feel stupid for even caring about that holiday, or lusting after that pub garden. Instead, your thoughts start to sound like a Billie Eilish slow jam. You wonder if Marge from next door really did have coronavirus, and if your parents have it too. You start pouring over the global death toll, you dwell far too long on the horrible stories of people dying alone, you start to think that might be you, you check your temperature for the fifteenth-time that day, you call your mum. You cry.
The One Where Everything Is Looking Up
It might feel like denial, but it looks and sounds like a 1950s cheerleader. This is the power of positive thinking stage, where you start sharing good news stories about post- Covid19 China and the rush for a vaccine. You start talking about the great things this has done for carbon emissions and climate change. You focus on the sense of community this has fostered, the 8pm NHS claps, the singing-from-balcony videos, the countless House Party calls which make you feel oddly more connected than ever before. You go from angrily tweeting about government inaction to a ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ mentality that has you saying weird things like ‘Blitz spirit’ and ‘can-do attitude.’ It’s an odd stage, but a nice one, because denial may be dangerous but hope is comforting.
The One Where You Start to Rebuild Everything
This is the busy stage, where you begin picking up the pieces of your pre-Coronavirus life. This could be anything from styling out a new home office and online shopping for athleisure and fluffy slippers, to radically changing the way you work, manically rebudgeting your entire life around Universal Credit, adjusting to a scary new fiscal reality. If you’re furloughed, this is the stage where you might try and learn the piano, or bake Instagram’s nine millionth loaf of banana bread.
The One Where Everything Feels Like A New Normal
How do you know you’ve actually adjusted to this new coronavirus life? When you can’t remember what the office looks like, when you’ve forgotten how to use mascara, when heels suddenly feel like the most ludicrous choice of footwear ever, when you watch Stranger Things on Netflix and the strangest thing about it is the fact they can all leave the house and hug each other. Adaptation is key to survival, but so is knowing that this is temporary, that all the things we most loved and miss about our pre-Coronavirus life - seeing friends, hugging family- will, someday soon, return.
This article was originally published on GLAMOUR UK
