There is no typhoon to blame this time. There is no end in sight. No date, no prognosis, no nothing, except for uncertainty that spreads quicker than the Corona virus. And fear. I sense fear around me as well as inside – there is no typhoon, nothing we can see. Just questions, wondering if the man sneezing on the bus to the hospital is having an allergic reaction to the pine trees or if he is infected with the virus, if he woman coughing over the tomatoes at the store is having a cold or the corona virus.
If it wasn’t so scary, I could like the situation – the streets are not crowded, people stay at home more; there is a quiet solitude spreading out. But people are dying, and the fear is stressful – I feel it in my body, the uncertainty. It is difficult not to be carried away, to cling with everyone else to the raft of information floating in the news river, hoping to find some reassurance and instead only finding more and more reasons to worry; feeling that there are too many of us hanging on to the same raft. A raft that starts to feel more and more like a death trap than a lifesaver.
In times like this I want to go to the mountains, just me and my wife and our baby, cuddle up in a mountain cabin in front of a fire with supplies for months, relax and have a beautiful time in nature. I go there in my mind, but the reality remains the same – the same trains, the same stores, the same (although not so many any more) coughing sneezing people that try to act rationally while protecting their families. With the irrational result that today there is no toilet paper to be found anywhere.
I was shocked coming to the store the other day, seeing there was no toilet paper at all. I went to the pharmacy, the other supermarket I seldom use, and just like masks, toilet paper seem to be out of stock. Everywhere I hear people talk about toilet paper now. My wife came home from work, told me there is a rumour that most of Japan’s toilet paper is produced in China so people are afraid there will be a lack in production, and therefore people stockpile. At least now I understand why people are buying all that paper (and feel glad that we have our normal emergency stock to use, so we will be ok for a little while).
But still – not only is the spread of the virus scary, it is also scary when words spread and cause panic. Panic and fear – so difficult not to be inundated by worries. And there is no typhoon to blame; in many ways I have been lucky to have lived a quite protected life, and maybe that is part of why I get more stressed about this than my wife, who has lived her whole life under the threat of typhoons or earthquakes; she has gotten used to handling crises in a way I have not. I want to go to the mountains and breath the mountain air, but going to the mountains requires taking the train. And we do not use trains unless we have to. So what I do is thanking my wife for being who she is, for being my rock. And she thanks me for caring about and making sure that we have toilet paper, masks and hand soap. Even in a crisis we seem to make a good team.
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