Covid Feels Familiar.. Covid brings back memories of a young…
By: Sarah Cary
Tags: Career Burnout, High Achiever, Overseas Work, PTSD, Foreign Service

Author, Traveling India 2013

This quarantine feels familiar. It’s an unprecedented event that’s never occurred in history, so how does it feel so familiar? The familiar ability to stay confined to one bedroom in one home. Familiar to have to face my discomfort & safety from outside my walls alone & unspoken. The familiar typing with cries for help because I’m experiencing emotions I need help parsing through. And the misunderstanding or inability of the recipient to comfort me.

Flashes of October 2013 come forward in my memory. Darkness and fireworks outside and fluorescent lights on above my dining room table. I had just moved to Mumbai the week of my 30th birthday. My marching orders were obedient and far ahead of my heart or will to be there. My sister sent a birthday package with me. I remember opening it alone in my bedroom. I was feeling so many wishes, yet was doing my darndest to adjust and work with what I had & have a good attitude. When Diwali festival came one month later, my resistance and sanity could barely do an honest job.

At this point, I was still encountering internet outages & unreliability. I wasn’t comfortable enough with my new surroundings. So, I put my energy and desire to have a comfortable home into nesting. The local staff spoke English as a second language, making the smallest request need more patience. Later I sent a punch list to the housing department to assist them, so another could have it better. I wasn’t prepared for the difficulty. I wasn’t prepared for the poor transportation in an unfamiliar, intimidating city. I was raised in rural America and departed the bird chirping, palm trees swaying environment of Jamaica before arriving there. I also had returned to my music and was more sensitive-to-sound. I wasn’t prepared to face the noise of Pali Hill crows, rickshaw horns and now fireworks for hours on end. When my positive self-talk expired, I sent a Facebook message to my sister. It was dripping with complaint and honesty. I never did get a response. I later made an international call to a childhood friend. She wasn’t prepared for the understanding & maturity I needed. She yelled at me, “Sarah, Didn’t you choose this?!” I was so hurt by her response that I didn’t talk to her for 3 years. I swallowed her rebuke and soldiered on, but I didn’t choose it, actually. I continued to work with locals and get used to the new office culture. I took rickshaws to work every morning for 3 months. They’d cause wind blown hair and confrontation with agast odors of pollution. I learned to always have a hairband and scarf. I gave directional cues in Hindi and head nods.

I began hosting, always creating a life without excuses and making the best of it. I hosted a baby shower for a new friend, Christmas feast for our Marine Security Guard Detachment at Post. I hosted new Indian friends plus an American mutual friend visiting from Nashville. But all of these never quite cut the sting of how lonely that apartment could get. I’d have evening plans and outings in the city often. I took music lessons on the other side of town and had weekly get-togethers with church friends. I compensated the feeling of outer city pollution and chaos by organizing my apartment to a “T”. Soon, there were no more home projects to distract me. After a visiting house keeper cooked for my diet-of-a-bird, it left me with a lot of free time. I’d sing in my office, and it started to feel as if I was in a tower. I was also in a tower sort of building in Kingston, my previous assignment. It also had moments of too much alone time. At the time it was exclusively fellow Americans. So, as soon as I moved there I had dinner invitations and friendly colleagues were an elevator ride away. Laughter and life filled the hallways of the building, I remember. Pleasant security guards with bright white smiles greeted me in an accent. Here, up in the tower on the 7th floor, my view from the living room was usually gray skies and hundreds of cawing black crows. The ones I grew up watching in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds”. There were so many that the apartment was wrapped in something like chicken wire, making the porch and windows have the effect of being in a cage. And so, that’s how I felt. Caged in a tower with all my attempts to voice limits in adjusting to the culture and life change unacknowledged.

Today, I watch as the world is so understanding of the human experience this social distancing life change brings. The limits, the difficulty adjusting, the resources to deal with collective isolation and loneliness. The same experience I felt I had to toughen through. At the time it caused me to think, maybe’s something wrong with me? Am I not doing this right? I was on a panel of how-to-build a life in a new city, yet felt as if I failed beyond my tools to actual feelings.

6 years away from that experience, I consider myself “normalized” and healed from the habits, desensitization and self-talk that got me through that time, best I knew. Today, I’m a graduate of more human skills for success programs & mindfulness habits than I can count. Today, there’s no glossing over my needs to show up for a career or job demands I actually didn’t choose. Today, I’m careful to pick up on bodily cues and emotional triggers to process them healthfully and directly. I’m empathetic of individuals, specifically professional females, who toughen their way through emotional needs. There’s so much that changed about myself and how I’m willing to live life because of that familiar experience. Thankfully, there was a blessing hidden in that experience. My developed anxiety came to such a head that I had to learn to face it, “fess” it and manage it. Unlike many performance-driven career burnouts, it happened when I was young enough to rule it out as an accepted way of life. It wasn’t a decision I made overnight. There was a long buildup. A year to be exact.

It’s no wonder today, I dedicate free time to do personal development exercises in relation to life choices. We all learn at different rates- and I still make mistakes. That painful experience buried in a once-in-a-lifetime but untimely opportunity moving to India did produce purpose. And dare I say- passion. I’m only a voice but without a doubt, I know my story can serve a purpose. Maybe to the woman who gave everything to a job but left yourself miles behind? Maybe you suppress your new values to fulfill an old commitment? Or, you’re not sure why a new life change you may have signed up for is harder to handle than usual.

Sometimes, life can take you on a path where what’s normal no longer is right. There are moments in life to endure and there are moments to make a change. If a part of your life feels like that caged apartment in Mumbai, there’s always room to dream again. It may not happen overnight and some may not be able to take the leap for who you could become. It’s risky! If you do feel a call to a version of yourself beyond the framework life built for you- rather than you designed for yourself, it’s for a reason. It will take undoing. It will take unwiring. It will take commitment & authenticity of self.

To the others, perhaps you don’t have to live a year in solitude in India like me to have similar enlightenments. Or save yourself the sorrow of loneliness to force yourself to find the community where you really belong.

I sincerely pray you aren’t directly affected by the virus and no one would wish this pandemic. But, this alone time could be a catalyst for the change you were sensing a build up from already. Maybe this quarantine can be an opportunity to become more self-aware. Or to assess what’s not working in your life or career and re-evaluate priorities. A chance to start that exciting side hustle because, why not? Or explore your creative side that got side-lined in your former life.

I know my experience showed me. The question is, what could this quarantine be showing you?