Navigating a Global Pandemic

Intro

I know that something has snapped inside me. I'm sure of it. It's as though the basic components of my mind were lit with a match and allowed to burn. It's like someone hit my "reset" button and my hardware malfunctioned in the process. I know it because here I am on the floor curled up in a ball, chest heaving, unable to get a decent breath in and trying to decide if I'm in the middle of a panic attack or if my lungs are being infiltrated. I can't tell. I'm not sure. I'm not sure of anything, only of my certain impending insanity. Everything I've grown to know is unstable right now, and I know I'm not the only one because all it takes is a step outside to witness the social chaos that's ensued around me. I keep imagining that if I close my eyes and concentrate hard enough, I'll wake up from this nightmare. Maybe the universe is teaching me a lesson. Maybe God is forcing non-believers like myself to fall down to their knees. Maybe this is payback for all the moments of ungratefulness, for all the times I raised my voice at my daughter, for all the unnecessary fights I picked with my husband. Maybe I'll wake up any second and the past month will never have happened. But this isn't a cruel joke my mind is playing on me, and if this is God's plan, I know it better than to be a dream. I know, even in this moment, things are as bad as they seem. Right now, for the first time in weeks, I'm not thinking about empty grocery store shelves or face masks or big buckets of hand sanitizer. Right now, my thoughts are squared in on something I can't say out loud, something I can't even begin to fathom within the realms of my imagination. 

It is the realization that, with complete certainty, nothing will ever be the same again.