This pandemic has shaken a lot of us up, myself included. Like everyone else, I have never experienced anything like this in my entire life. This is unchartered territory for me. I have never been advised to stay home for as long as we have, I have never gone so long without seeing my friends and I have never, ever felt this kind of fear in my entire life.
The fear of COVID 19 is something entirely different. It’s unlike anything I’ve felt before, any emotion I’ve experienced. It’s not a fear for myself. I’m young, healthy and for the most part, quite fit. Statistically, the virus will only scratch the surface of my immune system. Of course, there still remains a chance that things may go wrong, and I’ll end up in a hospital bed alongside so many others. But like I said, the probability is insignificant.
Insignificant for me, that is. But what about the senior citizens around me? My fear is primarily for them. And I’ve never been so scared for the life of my grandparents, the elders in my apartment and the ones I see in the street sometimes. It’s terrifying to know that the virus that will barely give me a cough, can literally end their lives.
I’ve never felt this kind of fear before. It’s the fear of never seeing them again, never touching their wrinkled hands, never hearing their advice and never smelling their familiarity. It’s the fear that they’ll suffer more than I will, they’ll be in pain that I can’t even imagine. They’ll pass away and form a statistic on the WHO website, or on Indian media, or the CDC website. They’ll be that +1 in a COVID 19 death chart. In history books, the people I once knew will just be a number.
Being afraid for them is a kind of fear I have never felt before.
Memoirs of a Muse 