Beyond the Mask

I look out my gigantic picture window down to the ground floor. They are all there, laughing and talking. One is sitting on the steps with a snack, another is doing jumping jacks, while the others sit or stand around congenially beginning the work week with some light conversation and coffee. While I am up behind glass, alone.

There was no invitation. No WhatsApp message. Nobody stopping by or picking up the phone to call and see if I wanted to join.

I sit down at my desk again, pulling my terrycloth gray mask away from my nose for a few seconds so I can calm my breathing. After going up and down the stairs to retrieve a key for an emergency door exit, I'm breathing a little heavier. It's not only the exertion, though. It's the anxiety.

I'm a TCK. I'm used to adapting without much thought to the process. Even now, when I puddle hop to meet my goal of "5 new countries this year" I instinctively ride public transportation, visit historic places, and search for hole-in-the-wall authentic restaurants, finding myself surprised if I encounter any glitch at trying something new. I assume I should be able to maneuver like a local, even if I've never been there before.

This COVID-19 thing, though, is not as easy to navigate. The first time to the grocery store was extremely difficult as my husband and I tried to figure out when to use alcohol hand sanitizer (before or after you take off your gloves? turns out both), when to put on the mask (before leaving the car, not necessary to wear it the entire time you are driving), and how to properly sanitize our shopping (throw away any outer shells if possible, wash all produce in vinegar water, wash all groceries that are not cardboard or porous in soapy water, then rinse). A normally-looked-forward-to trip had become a nightmare and I found myself snapping unnecessarily at my patient husband as we sorted out the process.

Now, three months into it, we have a routine and while I still don't relish going grocery shopping, I don't dread it as I did before. I adapted. I managed. But the anxiety is still there.

The other side of the TCK is that their chameleon super-power allows them to blend so well into their environment that they can easily be mistaken for the wallpaper. In other words, they don't exist. I've also experienced this many times both as a TCK, a minority, and a woman. I may look Caucasian and speak like an American, but if I don't open my mouth to make my presence known, I disappear.

When the COVID-19 broke here, there was initial panic. Everyone stayed home if they could. Hand sanitizer was everywhere and we were washing our hands like we all had OCD and googling Early Symptoms of Coronavirus anytime we sneezed like the hypochondriacs we were. We watched the numbers going up every night, speculated about why some countries had more deaths than others, criticized world leaders for how they did or didn't impose lockdowns in their countries, and wondered if the world would ever go back to normal.

Then things got comfortable. People started going back to work, eating out in restaurants, and gathering in groups. COVID-19 hadn't gone away, though its initial rapid attack was slowing down, but it didn't seem as dangerous anymore. Even though the medical literature was announcing in stentorian tones the treacherous side effects of the disease, even as thousands of people breathed their last every day, because it hadn't affected anyone we knew personally, it didn't worry us as much.

Except it worried me. When I first returned to work, I kept distance from others, hurrying in just to work and leave, not stopping to chat or say hello to anyone. I had been working from home for about 2 months but they had stayed home for a few days and then, bored with nothing to do, or needing to come in to the office to take care of some matters, had decided to come in on a regular basis. They gathered for coffee in someone's office, chairs pushed close together so more could join the social event.

Uncomfortable with the lack of social distancing, as the news began to announce that COVID-19 could be transmitted by breathing, I became even more apprehensive. So I started wearing a mask.

It's funny how something as simple as a piece of cloth can both save and kill you at the same time. Ironically, I wear the mask more to protect others around me, though I am hoping it will help somewhat reduce any effects on me if an asymptomatic person were to breathe nearby. Yet the symbol of protection became a neon flag, signalling to all that I was not somebody to be around. The parties continued, but without me. I watched from my window as birthdays were celebrated. I heard the excited vibrations of chatter down the hallway as people returned from an international-trip-quarantine. I passed colleagues standing in an office door, coffee cup in one hand and tasty treat in the other, as they shared conversation on their way back to their office.

I couldn't sleep last night. Maybe it was the portent of summer, as the night air warmed and the breeze paused for a breath. I don't usually have insomnia. I hadn't eaten late. I hadn't watched a scary movie. I hadn't taken a nap that afternoon. As I lay there in the semi-dark, calculating how many hours I had left before my early morning exercise alarm, I realized that there was more than an antsy-feeling in my legs. There was anxiety.

This time around, my TCK superpowers are failing me. I can adapt to the situation, but I cannot adapt to the anxiety levels. I don't know how to not be anxious. I didn't learn this growing up, other than stuffing my feelings. And I'm tired of assuming I will figure it out because this is not figure-outabble. Nobody has lived through this before so there are no roadmaps, no guidebooks, no manuals for this sort of thing. What do you do when you cannot breathe or you have to sneeze when you're wearing a face mask? What do you do when your nearly-retired mother lives a continent and a half away and you don't know how to protect her from getting sick? What do you do when the airport shuts down for over 3 months and you are worried about being able to get out of the country to maintain your residency? What do you do when the economy has tanked so low that a simple car maintenance costs more than half your month's salary?

What do you do when the people you thought saw you, really don't?

This, perhaps, is the hardest question of all. My mom told me, "This is when you know who your true friends are." The problem is, I always believed they were all my true friends. I lived life in a perpetually happy bubble, assuming everyone who smiled at me was my best friend for life. Now I'm having to accept a very different reality and I cannot do it.

I could take the mask off and blend back in again. Without the mask, they wouldn't worry about offending me and would easily invite me to the morning coffee klatch. I cannot do it, though. I have to protect my health above all else, even if it makes others uncomfortable. I am protecting myself and I am protecting them. Even if they don't realize it.

So, for today, I pull up my gray mask once more. And I disappear.