Where we go when we are afraid

Not unlike Luisa in Encanto, I’m someone that suffers from Eldest Daughter Syndrome.

I am the unofficial leader; the one in my family who makes the decisions, who tries really hard to make sure everyone is okay and is convinced 100% of the time I’m failing at it. I am the one who is often the boss - and the one that will most often say “I’m fine.”

If our response to fear is fight, flight, freeze or fawn, it’s definitely fight when it comes to my family. 

I say this to you by way of context.

Because, additionally, I become an unholy Drill Sargent from the depths of hell when I am scared, barking orders like it’s an episode of Survivor and we’re all about to get kicked off the island.

In the last two weeks I’ve sent many texts to my loved ones telling them to get masks, to buy toilet paper, to stock up.

The thing is, they haven’t really been nice texts. They’ve been panic-tinged full-blown exhortations that they don’t want to get Covid, HAVE YOU PREPARED?

“Leaders must either spend a reasonable amount of time attending to fears and feelings, or squander an unreasonable amount of time trying to manage ineffective and unproductive behaviour,” according to Brené Brown.

Here have been my attempts to attend to fears and feelings:

A pulse oximeter

Toilet paper

Electrolytes

KN95 masks

Coffee

Frozen meals

Cat food (for the cat, not me - unless things get really bad)

Clementine Ford’s How We Love 

Vitamin C

Throat lozenges

Panadol

Bread

Frozen veges/berries

The boxed milk stuff that stores for ages

It makes me feel better, to combat fear in this way. To sit in my house and look at the things I have in my armoury against this unknown thing (for most) outside the door. To know that I can help loved ones with some of these things.

It helps, to know that if I get sick with Omicron, at the very least I don’t have to work out how the hell I’m going to get food - and that my family will already have some supplies if I’m out of action.

See, I’ve already done it once. I got sick in March 2020. I tested negative for Covid-19 - but didn’t get better for 9 months. I still get internal vibrations/tremors on my right side when I am stressed, and fairly often at night. In the end, doctors can’t rule out that I have something called Long Covid, which can result from Covid-19.

When you are that sick, you panic. You panic over the people you interacted with, over every single horror story you read online, over the fact you are on day 10, then day 30, then day 60 and there is no end in sight.

You panic because all of a sudden you have to navigate how to live your life without interacting with anyone else.

You panic because you are so fatigued that just trying to think exhausts you.

It is fatigue that isn’t exhaustion or tiredness or low energy. It is fatigue that grabs you in its maw and will not let you go. It is fatigue that will take you away from yourself until there is nothing left but the overwhelming demand from your body to sleep, only to find that when you wake up there’s not a flicker of energy gained.

Long Covid affects one in 10, three in 10, five in 10 - it’s early days and the jury is still out on many aspects of Long Covid.

It’s early days also for whether Long Covid occurs with Omicron.

News articles more often than not fail to mention Long Covid, and of late fail to factor it in as a serious risk in the context of Omicron and as a factor in New Zealand’s response.

Finland’s Minister of Family Affairs and Social Services Krista Kiuru recently said “There is a threat that Finland will see the emergence of the largest, or one of the largest, new groups of chronic diseases, and that not only too many adults will suffer from a long-term COVID-19, but at worst also children.”

What I am saying is, I am lucky. I am not suffering from some of debilitating effects that other still haven’t recovered from, 2 years later. I know people who can’t taste or smell, who still have that awful, crushing fatigue. I have heard stories from people who have faced abysmal gaslighting, who have given up trying to get help from a system that is only just beginning to grasp what Long Covid is. 

What I am also saying is, I am lucky to be able to prepare for a possible round two, in line with the Prepare Now message from the government.

There will be Eldest Daughters out there up and down the county doing the same. There will be those who won’t be sleeping because they’ll be trying to work out every single contingency and they will be balancing their budget over and over again because not everyone can afford an N95 mask and food at the same time, the way I am privileged to be able to do.

There will be those carrying their fear for their loved ones at the same time they are fighting to keep them safe.

What if equitable access was given to everyone to Prepare Now?

To my knowledge food grant limits, for example, have not been removed, or at the very least additional grants given.

There is absolutely no way you can deal with things like food or rent or trying to navigate the endless corridors of WINZ when you are also sick with Covid - I can vouch for that with absolute certainty. It is imperative that everyone be given the opportunity to prepare, in advance of getting sick.

Every single one of us is looking out of the window at the storm outside and wondering how, exactly, this might be weathered.

It’s my belief that we belong to each other, and that this holds true even when it doesn’t seem likely or even remotely possible, and especially when some people talk about going into green during a literal, actual-thing-in-actual-reality world-wide pandemic.

Brené Brown also says that “integrity is choosing courage over comfort”.

This is a moment that will require immense courage from all of us.

I would like our most vulnerable to be afforded our highest integrity - and I would hope that in all of our upcoming policy decisions we remember to choose what it right over what is convenient - and courage over what is comfortable.

I would hope that we fight for each other - even while we are afraid.