I am not prepared for COVID-19.  Or any disaster.  Complex PTSD is like navigating a boat through choppy, semi-manageable seas always on the look out for (but emotionally unable to deal with), a tsunami.  I should be ready.  I understand the necessity of it all.  But still, I am less than prepared.  A fact which frustrates all who know me, their continual prodding only immobilising me further.

Every single person I speak to enquires about my stockpile of groceries, and every news and social media thing I read tells me to do this, that, and the other. 

With PTSD you would think I would be agitated in a go out and buy everything way.  No.  I am paralysed.  Which makes sense I guess given that child me froze when danger arrived, too scared to run.  But in this case, it means that the kindly suggestions of others are increasingly forgotten by my frozen brain.  Or are insurmountable. 

Even small tasks. 

The instructions may seem clear, but the tasks are NOT straight forward.  Like trying to organise medications, for instance.  “Make sure you have enough for a month”, I am told.  But.  I have so many medications, all of them due for renewal at conflicting times.  One of them often out of stock.  And a chemist unwilling to simplify the pandemic-preparedness process by dispensing all of them at once – or providing extra of the one which often must be ordered in.  Forcing me to juggle four different scripts, and a stressful three week wait.  Hoping that the medication will still be obtainable then.

Counting down those 21 long days, battling waves of nausea, I am wondering how to deal with chronic illness in a world which is shutting down – potentially care-less.  Riddled with this flared up illness I feel bloated, pain-filled, slow and weak.  Physically and mentally. 

So, online or verbal, information goes in one ear and straight out the other – I am in total overload, continually pushed to think thought processes which currently aren’t possible, wishing that rather than point out that I am not managing, that someone would do something useful.  Like appear with paper and pen to organise me, helping me to break each task up into small bits.  But, what I get is a barrage of tips, like cans of food being thrown at me.  I appreciate advice.  But, advice is only good if the person hearing it is capable of following it.  Otherwise it is just noise.  People are speaking at me, not with me. 

Talk slow everyone.  Please.  Slow this all down.  I simply cannot keep up with all the societal changes.  Everything throws me right now.  Everything is left-field.

But, I am trying.  At the supermarket I have a list, sometimes, when I go.  But fear and despair (mine and that of others) trails me around the aisles until I just want to escape.  Shopping stresses me always, panicky people makes it nightmarish.  The online shopping system keeps crashing. 

Despite my distress, I am still cluey enough to note however, that when there are products on the shelves, there are only the expensive brands, meaning that I now pay triple for less toilet paper, than I did a month ago – which feels forever.  Prices go up as I shut down.  I am not sure how that will look in my budget, given my income is a pension. 

That was a week ago. 

Today, I’m finally too exhausted to walk between shops or bus between suburbs seeking elusive products, endlessly pushed aside by people obsessed with pasta and paper towel. 

That toilet paper shortage war? 

Too overwhelmed to care. 

So, I have Ryvita biscuits, and cooking chocolate.  And the last bag of rice in Coles.  That is my stockpile. 

I am not prepared for COVID-19.  I am paralysed. 

Written March, 2020; revised July, 2020