How do I feel about the coronovirus 2 month confinement in Orange County California, USA where we have low infection numbers?

Angry.

In some places it’s important to limit infections, because hospitals need to keep up with it or the population is so dense it could be a disaster.

But in other places neither of those things is a reality and shutting down becomes a threat to other people’s lives, some loose their job, their exercise routine (a big part of mental health), years ago I read Blue Zones by Dan Buettner, which explains your reason for getting out of bed (Ikigai) and physical social circle are two of your biggest contributors of actual physical health, longevity and well being pretty much on par with diet and exercise.

Saving some people has cost others in a way that is impossible to calculate, 800,000 people (1 in 40 seconds) commit suicide worldwide, every year. How can we ignore the impact decreasing people’s mental well being will have on the world if we are concerned with every life?

My dad asked me what that has to do at all with this situation and my response is that in both cases it’s not my moral responsibility to keep the people alive, but theirs.

I’m not against being concerned about the elderly or ill who die from coronovirus, but I absolutely consider their lives equal to the others who die from anything else, suicide, opiod overdose. You may say they are making choices people can’t choose not to get infected, but that’s not true, it’s a choice to see people, the elderly can permanently self confine (that’s very drastic, but possible). It’s a situation where very drastic alternatives are the reality. For people to loose their jobs to help keep others sick, isn’t cool and no big deal and no problem and all smiley like the commercials encouraging people to stay home and stop the spread.

Not that I don’t care, but the ethical burden is on them to stay home, not me to stay home to not get them sick.

I am so irritated by the implication we should do this cheerfully, so much more than the interruption.

I’m watching Ted Burns World War 2 documentary, four towns and many people who actually experienced the war, it’s very cool to see first hand history, they keep saying “we hated the war” but “it was necessary,” after all this time I agree with them.

What strikes me as wrong with america today is not that we over confined, but that we can’t be honest about hating it.

I know I as an individual am, but when I googled looking for someone expressing doubt of the necessity based on the facts, I could find that anywhere on the first three pages, I’m not saying an article was there and suppressed, but I think the emotion is there and suppressed.

I feel unsure we did any net good by social isolation due to the death toll under normal flu and cost in unemployment and loss of our freedom.

I feel surprised we could be kept in so long without a vote, when health officials asked for a week, the local government decided on 2 months with no vote. It’s the discrepancy between the two numbers that bothers me more than the length.

I feel thankful healthcare stayed open and adjusted very kindly.

I feel thankful fast-food was open, didn’t eat it a lot, but it did feel normal.

I feel thankful the stores restocked quickly.

I feel smoldering rage that the news presents possibilities as probable, that are just theoretical, and scares the public presenting theories in a way that confuses most people, I find it unethical, and intolerable that they continue to operate in a way that worsens people’s anxieties and health year after year.

I feel glad that more and more people realize the globe is a whole unit and humankind as well is a whole family and we can’t easily maintain a bubble, so that teamwork and what happens to others in other places affects our whole.

I feel glad for whatever lives we saved by my staying in.

I feel strongly opposed to being held in for two months for political reasons vs medical ones.

I hope that a medical board different from politicians can be consulted as to quarantine times in the future to attempt elimination of politics from a medical issue.

I hope we can find a different way to isolate the sick and elderly in the future that both protects them and gives the young and healthy a choice on going out and keeping their jobs. Like a combination approach of some quarantine with testing for go between and freedom for those who don’t choose that quarantine in areas not likely to be a huge problem (unlike San Fransisco and New York). Essentially I hope for a non-blanket response the next time, there will be a next time and a worse time.

I feel a such a deep rage at the connection between being told what to do and how to feel.

If I have to do this I will do this, that’s not a problem, but why are you suggesting I should do it with a smile?

This is definitely a trigger of my father’s generation pushing me to always have a smile pissing me off.

I’m not going to smother my pain so you don’t get uncomfortable, it’s your choice to be in my life or not, I’m not a pawn on someone else’s chest board to keep up appearances.

If I smile when I don’t mean it, a smile looses all meaning for me, in a way you rob yourself of ever seeing a true smile by requesting fake ones.

Real smiles are rarer than diamonds in my family. My son just gave me one.

I believe we should be able to choose our causes, but I also understand unwanted battles are forced on your group sometimes as well.

I maybe would have liked to help if I was given a choice or vote, I understand life won’t always afford me that luxury, but I don’t have to like it.

My dad yelled at my four times over my not having his opinion and was very verbally abusive to my sister, who is very depressive.

I don’t know about every family, but in my family, the elders have been asking us to hide every emotion except happy our whole lives.

Even my calm was not good enough, if they bought us a toy we didn’t want, and we weren’t ridiculously excited like the commercials, we were passive aggressively punished to try to get us to be exactly like their ideal image of a child.

It was hardest for me at Christmas, I’m a minimalist, I’m a phlegmatic, calm person, I loathe being lied to about “Santa” or anything, because it shattered permanently my ability to trust authority figures.

So far the best thing that’s happened in this corono-spring 2020 is my finding “Permission to Feel” and embarking on a journey to protect what matters to me.

My cause at this point is to ensure my son can give his honest smile all his life, which means not trying to force him to show it when he is angry or sad or calm, which means giving permission to feel however he feels, and also doing it myself to show him how.

Things are going better with my daughter now that we don’t put her in her room, we have the same rules, but I send her to her door to do spins in front of it when she breaks them. It’s weird, but maybe the exercise part makes it work better? I don’t know.

Our idea is that we are going to keep trying new ideas until we find something that works for all of us, rather than keep doing the old idea (rule breaker in their room), which didn’t work at all for us as a family nor a society (with prisons)…

It feels good to give myself permission to explain how I feel, I wonder why it took so long? If I was holding in stay at home feelings out of respect for the dead and families suffering? Or was it just what I have always done with big feelings?

I mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone lost or suffering, but I would now risk seeming that way, in order to feel my own feelings.

I don’t know why I can’t separate feeling them, writing about them and publicly posting them yet, but for some reason being able to express them publicly has enabled me to voice them privately, I don’t know why?

Ruffling feathers doesn’t seem worse enough to avoid killing myself from the inside out anymore.

I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS

The free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wings
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with fearful trill
of the things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom

The free bird thinks of another breeze
an the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn
and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

– Maya Angelou