The pull of apathy

A thing that COVID-19 has shown me

This week has been an interesting experience: Working remotely for a traditional newspaper while convalescing with my first case of COVID-19. Most of my symptoms are no worse than my typical months of spring/summer allergies: sinus congestion and sneezing. But there’s one symptom more impactful than most I’ve dealt with in my adult life, even when I was laid low with pneumonia in 2015: Profound fatigue.

I can’t exercise. I don’t want Long-COVID and wouldn’t exercise if I could, but I can’t. I get winded after walking up the stairs. But I don’t care. No more training for the White Mountains 100? Oh well. What if I can’t hike when Beat and I visit Switzerland? Whatever. How will I manage my anxiety if I can no longer engage in vigorous activity? Wait, what anxiety?

Here’s the thing about my case of COVID-19: It doesn’t hurt that much — no more than the months of May to October usually hurt for me, maybe less. Beyond the lack of pain, the virus has taken away my ability to do, well, almost anything. But it’s preserved my ability to work, and it’s taken away my anxiety. Poof! Gone! I stand in the direct blast of an ever-increasing firehose of terrifying news items and feel nothing. Oh, Elon Musk is breaking into the Treasury Department and stealing our sensitive financial information? Oh well. Hmm, they’re going to ship U.S. citizens to El Salvador for mass imprisonment for “crimes” that will likely soon include journalism? Maybe we can escape into the jungle. Eek, the mad king is leveraging another horrifying distraction by promising wide-scale genocide so we all look away while he continues to break apart the United States government and sell it for parts? Well, it is what it is.

And I admit, as terrible of a person as this makes me: As I sit here, not caring about anything, I think, “Maybe Long-COVID won’t be so bad.”

I can’t help but wonder: Is this how a fair percentage of Americans feel most of the time? I can’t claim to understand the mindset of Trump voters, but I’m skeptical that most voted for this. This is only going to hurt all of us as well as most of the rest of the world for the enrichment of maybe the top 0.05%. Our public lands privatized, our freedoms minimized, our infrastructure crumbling, our economy in shambles, and the storms of climate change coming for us all. I have been reading a lot this week. I still grasp a great sense of loss. I can still visualize a terrible outcome. I can still sense that the future I’d dreamed of for most of my life may be gone for good. I just have no emotions about it — not this week, at least. My body is too wracked with illness to muster that extra energy.

A couple of weeks ago in California, Beat and I were having a lighthearted conversation with our friend Liehann while the three of us drove to the start of a bike ride we’d planned. Offhandedly, I mentioned something about “Luigi,” and Liehann replied, “Who?”

“Luigi Mangione, the CEO killer,” I replied. He still had no idea who I was talking about. I launched into a long explanation about the shooting of the United Healthcare CEO, the health insurance crisis, angry youths, and vigilante violence. He had never heard of any of it.

“Wow, you really are checked out,” I told him.

“I told you, I don’t read the news,” he answered. “And I’m telling you, this is the way.”

Is it though? Is this the way? To distract ourselves and amuse ourselves and numb our emotions until it all blows up? To slip into the fog where the view is blurry and colorless but calm? It’s true, we’re individually powerless right now. We could protest in the streets by the millions but there are few left in power who care what we think. We could “vote with our wallets” but it’s becoming more clear that financial disaster is the goal. Did you read Project 2025? My guess is no. I read some of it before the election, but I had to stop because it was too much to bear. I was spiraling. Everything in that document would send the majority of citizens spiraling, which I’m guessing was the goal. Project 2025 was exactly the plan, but it sounds so dystopian that its authors were banking on no one taking it seriously.

Is that what happened? Is this what’s left? Apathy?

For today, I have nothing. Almost nothing. I have no power; I barely have any energy. What I do have is an immune system that is finally ridding my body of the dread COVID. I have a re-emerging will to pull myself off the floor and go for a walk. I have my Kachava and berry smoothie, refueling my brain with enough nutrients to reignite good emotions: gratitude, humility, and joy. The sun is out! The mountains are lovely. There is still so much beauty. My humanness is finite. The universe goes on and there’s no need to fear.