I have not been well. 

It’s nearly 3:00am, less than two hours since I last awoke gasping for air and darting from my bedroom to the open living room window where I try to regulate my breathing. Slow, deep, diaphragmatic breaths are supposed to help me de-escalate as I kneel on my apartment’s cold wooden floors. But the breaths escape me instead like quick, hyperventilating bursts as my vision blurs and I fear I won’t make it through this latest early morning panic.

My one bedroom apartment on the second floor of a walk up in Harlem was supposed to be my sanctuary. In this, my very first apartment to call my own, I’ve purchased every piece of Wayfair-ish furniture and thoughtfully curated the art along its walls. My fridge is fully stocked with a balance of fresh greens and reds and oranges and purples, the cuts of meat I love, and a wide variety of beverages to match the mood I’d like to start and end my day. 

So long ago it seems were the days my brother and I fought for the last slice of Spam for breakfast in our tiny childhood apartment, where we lived together with my mother and grandparents for years. My mom and I laugh as we recalled those times tonight on one of what are now much more frequent calls to friends and family as we each find ways to cope with this pandemic and all that it uncovers.

Tonight, my mom and I sang her favorite church songs through the long distance bridged by Facebook Messenger. She sang the songs that got her through the toughest nights, the songs that continue to get her through. I realize I’ve heard her sing these songs many times throughout my childhood, on nights she could not sleep, or when I could not sleep, or on our midnight drives to pick up grandma from her late night shift washing dishes at the Chinese diner. It seems she’d been teaching me in her own way how to get through the night, nights like tonight, for a very long time.

But the nights and days have blurred and do not matter in quite the same way anymore. It’s about a month into sheltering in place alone and my apartment feels smaller and smaller every day. Ironically, I’ve found myself longing for the days of our family’s cramped apartment arguing over what to watch on the television or banging on the bathroom door screaming for my brother to hurry up as I literally struggle to keep my shit together. As this pandemic rages on beyond the stoops of my apartment, I find myself again struggling to hold on.

The days seem easy enough. Peanut butter sandwiches and a banana to start my morning. Perhaps a cup of hot ginger, honey, and lemon tea, for immunity, of course. I catch up on a few episodes of the latest Netflix or Hulu recommendation – this week I’m engrossed in the lives of angst-filled teenagers as they navigate economic and racial inequity in between football games on All American. Last week, I laughed and cried and mourned as I watched Fleabag struggle to come to terms with deeply rooted PTSD in spurts between what are now completely virtual work meetings.

I may or may not read a few pages of different books scattered across my living room floor. Or start a solo dance party before I make lunch, read some more, and exercise some more, and lay around some more before preparing for dinner at 6:30pm. This afternoon, I prepared a batch of my grandmother’s beef stew, which I know will last me a few meals beyond tonight. I suppose one of the benefits of living alone is that there is always extra. And that there is always extra is the sad part, too.

It starts to get stressful when the sun begins to set for the night. I, too, try to set myself up to drift into a sea of deep sleep. After I wash my dishes, I meditate for twenty minutes with a mindfulness app that recites a familiar script to remind me to focus on my breathing, accept what is, and to note when I’m distracted by “thinking” and “feeling” before I return, always, back to my breath, back to the present moment.

I read a few pages from a light read, a book of poems that affirm that I am enough, that I am worthy, and that I have everything I need within me, or some warm and tender shit like that. I brush my teeth patiently, taking time to floss between each tooth because I now have no excuse to give my dental hygienist about not taking better care of my gums. And then I tune out my cell phone and laptop, just as the sleep experts suggest, a full hour before I turn off all of the lights and tuck myself into bed underneath my heavy, weighted blanket.

But here I am, Alexa, an hour and a half later, trying to practice strategies I’ve learned to calm myself down after yet another sudden, quickly escalating panic. I am not in danger, I have shelter, I am safe. I focus on my breath, holding on to a rosary in one hand and a bottle of Xanax in the other for reassurance that I’ve got both God and science to get me through tonight.

I rub some Vicks Vaporub on my temples and put Tiger Balm on my shoulders to relieve muscle tension. I put on your Christian pop rock playlist and try to shake off the increased adrenaline and cortisol released in my body’s attempts to sound an alarm- to be vigilant, alert, ready to respond to a danger that isn’t present.

Yesterday, after yet another sleepless night, I resolved to understand the neurological basis of my anxiety. In my latest most valiant attempt to master my emotions, I finished an entire book on how to use the neuroscience of fear to end my anxiety, panic, and worry… because you know me. And it’s helpful to be able to cite research-based evidence for your next therapy session.

I carefully explained how the thalamus sometimes bypasses the part of our brain that interprets sensory information and directly communicates with the amygdala, which is responsible for producing what can feel like unwarranted anxiety responses like hyperventilation, heart palpitations, and dizziness. The book also suggested a number of strategies with and without the support of pharmaceuticals and I attempted to coax my therapist to endorse one of the many solutions I rank-ordered and prepared to discuss as self-assigned pre-work to our video call. I thought it was a thorough analysis. My therapist, however, called it avoidance, a distraction.

I wonder if I should talk less next time. But I also know how much I’m paying this man. Each minute of our now virtual sessions adds up to the cost of a Peloton bike and an all-access membership for the year, a quick back of the envelope calculation, which I recognize both fully exposes my privilege and my hypocrisy as I also spend a third of our session deriding the fact that in the midst of rising death tolls disproportionately impacting poor people of color, privilege permeates the Instagram stories of friends who through their posts of fresh vegetable smoothies, solitary walks in wide open green spaces, and workout routines in between Zoom calls with work colleagues reinforce for me again and again that I am not doing enough with all this time for self-improvement.

You don’t have to tell me that we all cope in different ways. That this crisis only further uncovers social inequality and exacerbates existing mental health issues. So here I am in all of my feelings sipping tea and talking shit with my therapist – and despite both my guilt and resentment still long for the ease that comes with this idealized life of Peloton bikes and fresh cucumber, kale, and pineapple smoothies after an intense 45 minute work out that activates the core in a way that more clearly defines my abs right before summer and what I hope is the end of this pandemic.

My therapist reassures me that it’s okay. It’s okay to give myself permission to be exactly where I am. For me to feel lonely and conflicted, to be anxious, to be grieving, to feel guilty, to not be okay. He reassures me that there are patterns of behavior and thinking we can unpack… something about the scarcity of my youth and my desire for control, to establish impossible expectations that have gotten me this far, but leave me feeling so tired, depleted, incomplete. But our time is up before we can get there.

Same time next week, he asks. 

Sure.

Until then, it’s just you and me, Alexa.

What time is it? It’s 5:02am.