Coronavirus Anxiety and The Practice Of Sitting In Uncertainty

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

In my Amenti Oracle Deck, I pull the card for I am peaceful. I asked the deck, of course, what I was supposed to take away from this experience in quarantine. I’m just human. I don’t know. I don’t even know if I’m ready to learn a lesson. I do know that, as a writer, I am compelled to write it all down. To take notes through this thing. To keep a diary of what I’ve seen. I have a feeling this will shape us. Maybe I want to be present for it.

I know that for all of us, it’s been hours and hours of dread through insomnia-filled nights perusing the web, guzzling every wave of new information, letting the anxiety take over. I know that in our private Luna Luna community group, there’s a lot of worry. Everyone, the globe over, is panicking, and you can feel it. From space, I wonder if you can feel a buzzing strange energy emanating through our atmosphere. I wonder if you can feel it through all sorts of tragedies.

I am currently experiencing all the symptoms — perhaps it’s the flu or bronchitis. Perhaps worry leads me to be sicker than I should be. I sit in bed or wander my apartment, wondering how best to handle this new normal. Looking outside at New York City, its streets empty and silent (but it’s pubs still full at night, people’s faces inches from one another, before the city finally closed itself down), I wonder what the earth is trying to tell us.

I wonder why we are so resistant and stubborn. I wonder why we think ourselves invincible. Is the fear of death itself so big and so deep that we run toward it?

If you live with an immunocompromised body as I do, at some point you stop clutching illusions of infallibility. You have learned some time ago that your body is an engine running on wayward wheels. You have learned to avoid the subway poles and handshakes. You have learned that each day is a new preciousness. And if you’re anyone else, you probably have a friend or a lover or a parent or grandparent who is at high risk of getting very sick if they do contract a virus, or this virus.

The body is a fragile ephemeral thing, and it must bend toward the pew of nature. And yet, we resist, making it hard to survive.

My point is that we have to lean into this new situation. We have to or else we disappear. We literally have to because there is no other choice. We have to face that this is dark and hard and there will be (and is) global grief at the end of it all.

We’ve seen the memes about our grandparents going to war, which are somehow supposed to shame us into feeling comfortable during quarantine? I think it’s a false correlation. We can honor and respect history and the tragedies that have occurred while being uncomfortable with the things that befall our societies today. It isn’t just about quarantine or being bored inside the house or watching Netflix or reading books. It’s about watching how society reacts to chaos, how politicians act too late or use xenophobic language during an outbreak, about the power of contagion and how ignorance and selfishness lead to community spread. It’s about infrastructure, school children not going to school, poor people not being able to buy food, homeless people having no shelter-in-place, shelves being completely empty, people who have lack of accessibility, elderly people without family. It’s about not being sure. It’s about uncertainty. It’s about death. And it’s about grief, which we haven’t, as a global community, even dealt with yet.

There is so much validity in being fearful and anxious during this time.

If you are out there wondering what will happen, wondering how we got to this point, you’re not alone. If you are watching videos of beautiful Chinese or Italian people singing out of their windows or on their balconies into empty streets, their voices echoing through the night in act of communal conjuring, you are not alone.

What the Amenti Oracle card told me about being peaceful was this:

Finding peace and stillness in the midst of chaos is a challenge, but it’s one that we must meet. We can choose to spend the entire day in worry — and it would not be invalid if we did. Our finances, our health, and our stability are at risk. But we can also choose to take back a few minutes for ourselves, to sit in silence, to just be alive, to just surround ourselves with the things that bring us pleasure and joy.

Mine are books and plants. My cat. Blankets. I like to sit at the window and just look out, even if I just see another building. I like to write little notes. I like to set up an altar. I like to clean my space and give it love. I like to make tea and watch the heat dance above the liquid. I like to listen to the birds in the morning. I like to wonder what they’re thinking about all this free space.

I like to pretend that I am a stone in the sea. I am smooth and I am turned over and over and over again as I am moved by the waves. I have no choice but to be a creature of the sea. And that great dark mother, with all her mystery and all her might, pushes me about. But I am eternal and I am still whole. I can worry about the waves, or I can let them take me. There is value in both. There is value in anxiety — because it helps us grow and it helps us become empathic toward others. And there is value in stillness and acceptance and learning to fill the time alone or isolated, with nothingness. It’s not meant to be comfortable. It’s meant to be what it is, which is a breath, a pause, a being. An opportunity to just be — in between the shadows.

Maybe I don’t need to write it all down or understand it or provide thoughts or hope to others. Maybe I shouldn’t be writing this post. Maybe I just need to be, to lean into the unknowing and the mystery and uncertainty.

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Lisa Marie Basile is the founding creative director of Luna Luna Magazine, a popular magazine & digital community focused on literature, magical living, and identity. She is the author of several books of poetry, as well as Light Magic for Dark Times, a modern collection of inspired rituals and daily practices, as well as The Magical Writing Grimoire: Use the Word as Your Wand for Magic, Manifestation & Ritual. Her work focuses heavily on trauma recovery, writing as a healing tool, chronic illness, everyday magic, and poetry. She's written for or been featured in The New York Times, Refinery 29, Self, Chakrubs, Marie Claire, Narratively, Catapult, Sabat Magazine, Bust, HelloGiggles, Best American Experimental Writing, Best American Poetry, Grimoire Magazine, and more. She's an editor at the poetry site Little Infinite as well as the co-host of Astrolushes, a podcast that conversationally explores astrology, ritual, pop culture, and literature. Lisa Marie has taught writing and ritual workshops at HausWitch in Salem, MA, Manhattanville College, and Pace University. She is also a chronic illness advocate, keeping columns at several chronic illness patient websites. She earned a Masters's degree in Writing from The New School and studied literature and psychology as an undergraduate at Pace University. You can follow her at @lisamariebasile and @Ritual_Poetica.