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A Sense of Hopelessness is an Indirect Symptom of COVID-19

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COVID-19: the disease that destroyed my understanding of my mental disorders and how I deal with them.

 

March 13th, 2020: the announcement of our remote semester, better known as the day I realized that the joy of escaping my mind to attend enjoyable classes with extraordinary professors was over.

March 15th, 2020: the day I spent packing up my safe haven and drove home to my chaotic, remorseless, irrational family.

When I started the Spring 2020 semester, I had a schedule full of courses that I was interested in, courses that were going to further my sociological understanding of the world. For the first time in my college career, I was excited; I felt at peace with my decision to attend a four-year university. I was beginning to change my life in positive ways: figuring out which coping mechanisms worked for my seemingly-static anxiety and my overwhelming depression coupled with night terrors that previously persisted despite any medical or therapeutic help. My psychiatrist and I worked together to figure out which diagnoses fit my psychological issues, and we were finally getting somewhere. After discussing my symptoms at length or months to try and figure out what my triggers were, we figured out that the biggest stressor/trigger in my life was my family, each and every member of my small, yet powerfully manipulative family.

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I felt joyous, I felt free, I felt a weight lift off of my body as I had finally figured out what my trigger was and how I could finally work through dealing with it. The first step in dealing with my family’s influence was living two hours away, in Columbia. I knew that I felt different when I left home, but I could never put a finger on why. I knew that the abuse I endured caused Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder, but prior to obtaining a new psychiatrist, I could never set up a plan to fix my situation. Her recommendation: move out of your mother’s home, cut off contact with the most abusive members of your family, and mentally and physically isolate yourself from what causes you emotional pain.

 

My Hatch-Hall dorm room was my refuge; I was never obligated to visit my family while away at school. My newfound coping mechanisms were spending time with my college friends, turning on the do-not-disturb function on my phone to limit the messages or calls received from family members, and focusing on my schoolwork. Everything was going extremely well, I was feeling my anxiety subside, the familial-based night terrors were completely gone, and I felt my body release tension and accept contentedness in living for the first time in my entire life.

And then, I was told I have to move back to St. Louis and live with my family for the remainder of the semester and all summer. On the night of March 13th, I went to bed with anxious thoughts and awoke every hour to a new night terror, a new scenario in ways that living at home could go wrong. Social isolation would have been all right if I lived in Columbia, but social isolation with my relentlessly abusive family was another story.

 

The next few days I felt my depression creep back in with each breath; each moment I felt more numb. My coping mechanisms, which took years to learn, would no longer work. How am I supposed to turn on the do-not-disturb function on somebody in real life? When I finally arrived at home after an anxiety-inducing drive home, I unpacked my things briskly, so I could leave my house as soon as possible to seek asylum in my boyfriend’s house with his loving family. The moment I left my house, left my family behind, my muscles relaxed, and my mind stopped racing. However, I knew that this feeling would not last as my family makes it my obligation to clean the house, take care of my dementia-ridden grandfather, and spend time with my physically and emotionally abusive sibling.

“Just so you know, I took your parking spot in front of the house. You can bitch to mom all you want, but she doesn’t control me, and I don’t care if you have to walk a block to park your car,” my brother seethed at me with a smirk on his face. As he said this, I was reminded of all of the things he has done to me in the past, and all of the things I feel he will do in the future. As PSTD functions, I was brought back to Christmas-day 2017. The day my brother beat me, hit my head as hard as he could that I went blind for 4 seconds and screamed out for help as his fist raised back again to blow against my shoulder and neck. I felt tears swell, I felt my mother’s neglect to punish him or help me, and I felt the desire to die all over again. I left the house with tears in my eyes and a panic attack brewing in my chest and stomach.

Being in the same vicinity as my psychopathic, abusive brother and my naively, dismissive mother was going to break down any positive sense-of-self and understanding of my mental disorders as the abuse was going to endure for months and my psychological issues were going to escalate. The only escape available to me in St. Louis was my job, one that I could not partake in because of the strain my body and mind were undergoing through trauma while trying to maintain a 4.0 GPA.

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As this month has progressed, I have spent as much time away from my family as possible, but they make sure that every moment I spend at home I suffer. When home, I feel a dull ache in my stomach while my heart rate is well above what it should be. I wake up to my sister ”spanking” her son with ferocity for his hyperactive tendencies after being stuck in a house for nearly a month as he screams for my help and yelps. I do my homework in the midst of this stomach-turning noise, and then I leave to go to my boyfriend’s house for a sense of normalcy. I do not feel like I am mentally ill whenever I am around his family, but the sinking feeling in my chest knowing I will never escape my home-life remains. I feel helpless, hopeless, weak. I do my school work in chaos, I experience what “bliss” should come from being at home with family instead of as abuse and hatred of my existence. I feel like a prisoner in my own home as a victim of abuse as well as a viewer/listener of abuse. Abuse has always been a part of my existence and living in Columbia gave me the chance to escape it.

COVID-19 has forced me to live at home and suffer abuse all the while teaching myself four college courses. COVID-19 has restricted me from going out to the library to do my homework and confined me to my room as I listen to my nephew scream for my help after being beaten with a wooden paddle. COVID-19 has set my mental-health journey back every step I came since the start of this school year, and I am stuck in a cycle of experiencing abuse and trying to process it/cope with it, just to experience a new form of abuse the next day.

I am not okay, and I blame COVID-19 for it.

 

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