Two days ago I developed a twitch in my left eye out of nowhere. It started off slowly and then every five minutes or so I would feel it. I finally googled it (because we know Dr. Google is the first place you should go for medical advice) and if I ignore all the potentially scary things it could be, it said it’s often caused by stress and anxiety and will or will not go away on its own. Comforting, eh? Weirdly, it also said that temporary fixes include touching your face, humming or singing. Doctors are apparently mystified as to why this helps, but I can tell you, it does. Since then I’ve been holding my face periodically, humming “I’m a little teapot” or singing made up songs like “my eye is twitching and I want it to stop.” Thank you, science! I think?

It’s not the first time my anxiety has manifested itself in unusual ways. I once wore a heart monitor for 48 hours because I thought I had a heart problem. The answer? Anxiety. I once visited a sleep clinic, tracked my sleep meticulously for a month because I thought there was something physically wrong with me. The answer? Anxiety disorder. Oh, and there was the time my migraine attacks went from episodic to chronic and took over my life for five years. The answer? Pandemic anxiety.

Five years ago today the WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Our worlds shrank in an instant and everything changed. Happy Anniversary, I guess? What a strange feeling to be here, five years later. When I saw on Instagram this morning that it was the five year anniversary of the pandemic all I could think about was Bo Burnham’s song, “Five Years” from The Inside Outtakes. His film, Bo Burnham Inside is still, to this day, the best piece of art created during the pandemic that sums up the feelings of that time perfectly.

It feels even strange to say that, now, with the world the way it is, I miss those early days of the pandemic. No, not the fear of this unknown disease, or the alarming death tolls that accumulated world wide, or the hell our front line health care workers and families went through. But, I miss the sense of connection and “we’re all in this together”-ness of the early days. I miss regular zooms and games nights and yoga sessions with my east coast family, I miss clapping for health care workers, I miss the baking and the bread making and the creativity that I needed in my work. I know, it doesn’t make sense to miss a pandemic, but there it is.

It’s also because of the state of the world right now that I have this possibly unhealthy pandemic nostalgia. I mean, I didn’t develop chronic migraines via intense anxiety from nothing, but the world felt less divided, at least at first. Friends and family felt closer to me, even if I couldn’t see them face to face. It was a strange recipe of isolation + extra connectedness + fear + more free time than we’d all had since childhood, well, for those of us not on the front lines at least. But the uncertainty, the isolation, and constantly having to adapt took its toll.

We each experienced deep traumas in the past five years, whether people or society acknowledges it. So now I’m left with all these big questions. Are our societies worse now? Did the pandemic break us? How do people heal from collective trauma compounded with personal trauma? As quickly as the world stopped, it sped up again. When did that happen? 2022? 2023? Last month? Yesterday? Why did we all move on without taking time to stop and process and reset?

Because now we’re at a crossroads and I have no idea what will happen. Okay, I never know what will happen, but usually that’s like ten or twenty years from now, not every single morning when I wake up and make the mistake of looking at my news feed. I thought pandemic anxiety was bad, but this somehow feels worse. The state of the world right now, and the horrors that are happening south of the border are spreading faster than COVID. It’s a new kind of disease. One that divides people. One that tears people, and rights and things that are integral to a healthy society, down. I am not on board with this disease, or this division. One of my COVID Diaries was about the cracks of our society being exposed, and now I feel like those cracks have become earthquakes. Could anyone have stopped them? It’s hard to say, but I know it will take all of us to find our way to whatever this new future holds.

This COVID diary entry feels messy, because this time right now is messy. But, one of the things I learned in the past five year is that we cannot do this thing called life alone. We are not meant to do it alone. Or in isolation. So I’m going to hold out hope that people can and will unite. I’ll force myself to reach out to people, and continue to connect even on days where I feel like I can’t. I’ll keep fighting for what is right, even on days when it feels like hate and greed are winning and maybe, just maybe my eye will eventually stop twitching.