Of Going to the Plaza

I am lonely.

I am single and my family lives overseas.

All my classes and activities have been cancelled and the few that are running leave no space and time to socialize before or after.

My office is on the other side of the border, so I have not been there in over 3 weeks.

All social gathering points, where I used to meet acquaintances, are closed.

In the past 6 months I have received and given less than 20 hugs. This is no exaggeration, I have kept a diary. It equates to about one hug per week with significantly less in the first isolation period in April/May.

I feel tortured, emotionally emaciated, fragile and deeply sad.

When I say tortured, I refer to the common knowledge that isolation is a horrifying experience for humans and most mammals alike. I can remember my Biology teacher showing us a last century study, isolating baby monkeys from their group and mums to study the effect of isolation and neglect on the health of human children. Half of the poor creatures were given a stuffed animal as companion, the other not. I vividly remember pictures of little monkeys clinging to their toys and pictures of a lot of dead monkeys. Turns out, they just give up, stop taking food.

Of course, I cannot remember the details of the study, the lesson was some quarter century ago after all. As such, my evidence is scientifically speaking anecdotal. However, both Human Rights Declaration and the Geneva Convention contain the matter, and even a cursory Google search brings about powerful statements such as Beaumont’s and Alexis de Tocqueville’s denunciation of a New York prison experiment in 1826 using continuous solitary confinement for all inmates: “This experiment, of which the favorable results had been anticipated, proved fatal for the majority of prisoners. It devours the victims incessantly and unmercifully; it does not reform, it kills.”

So, with this in mind, I amend my previous statement:

I am tortured, emotionally emaciated, fragile and feel deeply sad.

And I am not alone. There are plenty of people in the same or similar situations out there. I dare to say, we all are.

And what do we do to cope? Well, I can only speak for myself. I find myself sleeping less, binge watching more, going outside and exercising less, having a drink more often and in general eating and buying my feelings to drown them out.

If I brave the news enough to dig underneath the blanket of COVID panic articles I find that I am not the only one with unhealthy to downright dangerous coping mechanisms. Suicide, Domestic Violence, Child Abuse, Drug Incidences, Drinking. All on the rise as people are trying to cope. It makes me cry to write this list, it makes me upset to write this list, most of all because I had to dig deep to even find it.

On the altar of COVID prevention, we are sacrificing more lives than the illness could ever hope to take. And we do it silently, unacknowledged and without care.

We have done this before, we, as humans. Time and again we have given in to panic, stirred it even, and payed for it in blood.

The Mayan leaders are said to have sacrificed thousands to soothe the panic over natural disasters. The Dark Ages saw hundreds of thousands dead over fear of otherness instilled and stirred by the church for power, control and money. There are countless examples, if one is brave enough to look. Stalin’s Russia, Australia’s Aboriginal Community, America’s Indians, and so many more, but the one that is closest to home for myself is WWII. It saw the German folk sacrifice millions of Jews and Gypsies to the idea of a scapegoat for all that had been wrong with their lives and their society.

I grew up there, grew up with the inherited guilt that comes with the knowledge of your grandparents having stood by, having watched silently while humans were being led to slaughterhouses. Literally. I grew up with the stories of Anne Frank and the siblings Scholl. And I grew up with the intention palpable in every history lesson throughout school to never let this happen again. I grew up with American movies featuring Nazis as the ultimate villains. I grew up with the rest of the world saying “We don’t understand, how could you do this?! We would have never stood by and just watched that happening.”

I am watching it, right now. We are watching it, on more than one front.

I am a DIDO employee between NSW and QLD. Contemplating a relocation for a long time now, I had a meeting with a Real Estate Agent and a Property Manager to inspect an apartment just before the border closure. Waiting outside the lift, the Property Manager, attempting to make small talk about current affairs, talked herself into an outright fit on “these sick NSW people that come across the border and defile everything. We can’t even go out shopping anymore, they are all over the Gold Coast centers.” The Real Estate Agent fed the fire, admitting that he was too scared to even go to Harbourtown the prior weekend. I said nothing. I was stunned by the shift in energy and the almost palpable anxiety filled hatred, so that all I could do was to contemplate if I would admit coming from NSW if I was asked. And of course, as soon as I had thought that, I was asked.

“I’m from NSW, not too far across the border” I said. Never in my life have I been confronted with what was thrown at me next. The lady’s face showed her desire to tell me to **ck off where I came from, and all her energy conveyed her fervent wish to get rid of me at once, at any cost. However, she could not, not quite, because whilst announced, the border was not yet closed for another day. So she opted for a venomous “Well, we won’t be able to help you then, next week.”

The Real Estate Agent said nothing. Not a word to mellow the situation or defend his potential client bringing him commission.

I didn’t say anything either, I will admit here. I was absolutely flattened and gobsmacked by that outburst of hatred and fear against me.

Why? Well, whenever I thought about saying something about where we have been heading since 2001, 2 things happen:

1. I fear the backlash – you know, brave people in history did not get celebrated in their time, they mostly got dead.
2. I think to myself “Ah, it won’t change anything anyway. Who am I that anyone would listen to me?”

Then a wonderfully gorgeous and courageous woman reminded me of something yesterday after I had told her about this encounter, which still makes me want to eat a generous helping of comfort food. “But what if we all thought that way? What if we all wait for someone else to start?”

As soon as she had said that, my middle school history book depicting the invention of democracy came to mind. A plaza full of antiquely robed Athenians mulling about, holding scrolls and debating with each other. Right, I thought, that was how democracy came about. Everyone went to the plaza, debated without weapons and then a majority rules vote decided. What if no one goes to the plaza? What if all the kind, empathetic, good people do not go? We leave the vote to the panicked and fearful then. Watching, standing by. “And that’s why we need to go to the plaza and put our 2 cents in”, I said, concluding that thought out loud.

So here I am, going to the plaza.