Reflections Post Apocalypse

Post Trauma Tuesday

I woke up this morning, and something felt heavier than usual.

Not because of anything on my calendar.
But because my body remembered something before I did.

Six years ago, the COVID-19 pandemic reached New York State, and everything went quiet.

I remember that silence.

Not just the empty streets or the closed storefronts—but the particular kind of stillness that settles into your chest when the world outside finally matches something internal. Two weeks before lockdown, I had been discharged from a psychiatric hospital. I came home with a diagnosis—Borderline Personality Disorder—and a mind that was already loud with it. Questions, fears, identities shifting like a mask on my face.

And then, almost immediately, the world made the same decision for everyone else:

Stay inside.
Keep your distance.
Monitor your symptoms.

It should have felt surreal. Instead, it felt familiar.

There was something disorienting about watching everyone else adjust to a reality that already felt like mine. The isolation. The hyper-awareness. The constant scanning of your body, your thoughts, your environment for signs that something was wrong. For many people, this was new. For me, it was an extension of the usual.

But familiarity doesn’t make anything easier. It just made it harder to explain.

---

Two years ago, I found myself back at the same hospital. I was referred again. Evaluated again. Sitting in rooms that felt like echoes of a version of myself I wasn’t sure I recognized anymore. And for a moment, it seemed like the path had already been set for me. The therapist recommended inpatient, my family took me to the hospital, and the hospital would lock me up.

But I narrowly avoided being incarcerated—I mean, admitted. And that distinction matters more than most people realize. Because what changed in that moment wasn’t just the outcome; it was my understanding of what I needed—or maybe more precisely, what I didn’t need. I realized that the type of care being offered to me—the kind where I was just another patient among dozens. The kind where people were yelling, fighting, screaming for help, desperate to get out—wasn’t the kind of care that was going to help me get better.

I didn’t need to be held in place.

I needed something that allowed me to live through it.

That realization didn’t fix everything. It didn’t suddenly make things clear or easy. But it was a shift. A quiet kind of agency in a system that doesn’t always leave room for it.

---

Now, six years out from the beginning of all of it, I think a lot about what actually lingered.

Not just the big, obvious things—the mask debate, the lines, the vaccines—but the smaller changes.

The way socializing can still feel like something I have to brace for.
The way a single cough in a crowded room can trigger my nervous system.
The way my body can still feel like a question I’m trying to answer.

There’s a kind of physical awareness that never fully turns off. A habit of checking—am I okay? Is this safe? Is this normal?

And maybe that’s one of the quieter legacies of that time. Not just fear, but attention. Sometimes useful. Sometimes exhausting.

---

Mental health looks different to me now than it did six years ago.

Back then, it felt like something I had to endure.
Now, it feels like something I have to actively choose.

And choosing it doesn’t always look like progress.

Sometimes it looks like stepping back from things I could push through.
Sometimes it looks like saying no without a better explanation than “I can’t make it.”
Sometimes it looks like writing this a day late because yesterday was spent taking care of myself in ways that don’t show up on a calendar.

I’m learning—slowly, and imperfectly—that this still counts.

That the timeline doesn’t have to be exact to be meaningful.
That reflection doesn’t expire if it doesn’t happen on schedule.
That taking care of myself is not something I need to justify after the fact.

Six years ago, the world stopped in a way none of us were prepared for.

What I’m still figuring out is how to move forward without pretending it didn’t change me.

And maybe that’s the work now.

Not returning to who I was before—
but learning how to live with who I became after.