Emotional Long COVID

What's the cure?

The end of this newsletter has info about joining in me in Torrey, UT, in May. It looks like this.

This morning, the “memories” feature on Instagram Stories told me I flew to Connecticut in 2018. I flew to Connecticut in 2018? Sure enough, there I was at the airport, there was my luggage, there was my room at the Sheraton. I searched my email and found evidence that I spoke at a regional SCBWI conference in April 2018. Interesting.

Me, evidently, in April 2018. The ‘gram doesn’t lie.

Then I had a few more memories of that trip: I visited in my room with a couple of women I’ve known since before my first book came out. We complained about the business. We gossiped. We had wine. I gave a talk and someone handed me a note afterward that inspired me to eventually write the This Creative Life book. I ate twice at a nearby BBQ joint—once with colleagues, once alone.

I remember the meal with other writers. Some I’ve known for a decade or more, some I’d just met. We joked about “burnt ends” and gossiped some more.

I’ve been having a lot of trouble lately trying to remember how I lived before spring 2020. Who did I see? Where did I go? Never mind trips and conferences—what did I do with my time in the day-to-day?

It’s about more than the logistics of things. It’s about the loss of relationships and beliefs, norms and expectations, identities, optimism.

I’m aware that for various reasons—work, kids, beliefs—a lot of people didn’t experience pandemic times very differently than ordinary times, not for an extended period anyway. Maybe not every single person was changed.

I believe most of us were, though. I know that I was. Or maybe it wasn’t precisely that I’d changed so much as allowed to fall into the most isolated version of myself. I’ve struggled with something that might be some kind of agoraphobia. It’s not the fear of what bad or embarrassing things might happen to me if I leave the house, more that I feel anxiety over being seen, of having my existence perceived.

Disappearing is a ruling fantasy of mine, which I assume is based in childhood stuff and an extreme version of “flight” in the fight/flight/freeze/fawn paradigm. And it may seem odd to those of you who know that I can be Very Online to hear that I do not wish my existence perceived, but controlling an avatar of yourself in the world is very different from existing in it.

“Lockdown,” the shorthand for pandemic isolation, was a kind of permission to disappear. We all got to take on a version of invisibility; if we were already prone to that, it was easy to let each other fade. Some people immediately worked on remedies and before there was even a vaccine, they’d figured out how to keep in each other’s sight. Others of us…well, if I ever meet a genie in a bottle, I hope it won’t grant me the wish to be invisible. While it feels safe, it’s also very lonely—one of those things you think you want until you have you it.

I’m working on coming out of it and trying to believe there’s a Sara-shaped space in the world beyond my walls ready for me to reoccupy. It’s not about leaving the house and doing things. I’ve actually done quite a bit of that, including travel.

There’s something more existential going on that I’m not sure how to solve. It has to do with writing and identity, too. Abandoning the avatars, maybe, and being the person in the body in time and space in a full and human way. Right now I feel one-dimensional, simultaneously underused and spread too thin. I haven’t quite figured it out, but I’m working on it.

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🌄 May 18-21: Join me in beautiful Southern Utah! Speaking of being in the world, I’m on faculty for the Entrada Institute’s Writing from the Land workshop. I wish I had more information than you can find at this link, but they are rebooting this after some years of not doing it, and are a bit behind on the communication front. But you could save the date and if you’re interested, let me know in the comments or by replying so I can ensure you get the details. The short version is that it’s a weekend writing retreat with readings, workshops, and time to explore the area. Brandon Griggs will be leading the non-fiction track.

📚 Cover reveal coming. I’m hoping that by the next edition of this newsletter, I’ll be able to share the cover (and title!) of my next book. I love the illustrator and the concept and am eager for it to take public form!

➕ Some recs:

• This Reggie Jackson documentary on Prime, especially if you’re a gen-x person who had any awareness of baseball as a kid.

• Rebecca Makkai’s new novel, I Have Some Questions for You, especially if you like true crime and maybe the You Must Remember This podcast.

• Arshay Cooper’s memoir, A Most Beautiful Thing, which came out a couple of years ago but I recently found via being a fan of the guy who reads the audio and looking for more books read by him.