Life with Shadows -Thoughts of Living Through Covid-19

Thoughts of living through Covid19. Learning to live With the Shadows.

By Catherine Beger, playwright, actress and founder of The Little Muse Children’s Theatre.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

From “The Hollow Men” by T.S Elliot

There is a theme of  gross uncertainty that pervades the story of this Pandemic.  As a performance artist, I am not unfamiliar with the shadow of doubt, but creativity has embraced us both and led us bravely into the unknown.

Navigating this crisis, however, presents unchartered territories for us all. In the last 12 months, I have publicly worked four months and one week. Learning to live with financial hardship has been very challenging.

I returned to teaching two weeks ago and now disaster has struck once more.

As I begin to write down thoughts on my own Covid mishap, dusk begins to fall and the shadows lengthen across the tiled kitchen floor. The invisibility of night will allow us a brief escape into the dark for a clandestine gasp of fresh air and a covert stretch of our limbs. 

Shadow world

My apartment is a world that my daughter and I shall inhabit solely for the next fourteen days.  I am prone to laughing in the face of despair but instead I feel rather uneasy. We are now beginning our quarantine period. She has contracted Covid and as her mother, and primary first contact, I will more than likely acquire it too. 

We have been relegated to a shadow world that is both unstable and uncertain –“To be or not to be”.

This is not a suicidal quandary but more of an insight into current public protocol that detaches the virus carrying self from society. We bearers of the Corona, are alone and an invisible fence of condemnation holds us in.

We want to do the right thing. Our loved ones want to do the right thing. The isolation is simultaneously public and private. However, the shadows that lurk in the mind, the shadows that form the essence of what it is to be human, taunt us with anxiety and fear of rejection.

I know now, more than ever, that I must carve footholds into this new way of life to avoid being eclipsed. I must learn to talk with my shadows and not fear them.

“How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also If I am to be whole.”

Carl Jung

Being a contained Covid statistic is very different from  Lockdown. Our united isolation gave rise to a unique camaraderie with friends, family and even complete strangers. Social media became a platform for shared  anxieties and frustrations. My pain was your pain, your laughter became mine.  At the very least we “liked” it.

The war against Covid-19

I suppose that is what a war does. It unites us against the enemy.  We became expert video makers, documenting this new found historic precedent, we shared memes, posted pictures of  the latest Lockdown gimmicks and parents made Tik Tok videos with their kids. We were in it together.

There was a kind of harmony in disharmony. So much easier to face the Covid monster when your ‘fam’ is with you. And so what if half the tribe voted conspiracy and the other Armageddon, you knew that somewhere within all the madness, you had your niche, and in that crisis, despite economic disaster, terrifying pandemic statistics, online fatigue and fear of the unknown, we had strength in numbers. We were part of a gang and together we could banish the shadows. 

Actually getting Covid 19, or even being quarantined as a primary contact is a very different experience. To be alone when the globe is turning ‘business as usual’ outside the window, and your own world has ground down to a halt – that is a strange sensation.

Everyone else is working, at school, having coffee or simply just out, you are no longer in a gang that is in. You are no longer in a gang that is out. 

And even if before infection took hold, you were a hermit in a cave, working online, living alone without friends, now it’s different because you have a label and are confined by your own moral judgement & social responsibility. Instead, you find yourself hiding behind the metaphorical school dustbins, feeling that although you did nothing wrong, others may perceive your very existence as negative, when they discover you are positive.  

Now, instead of being the public figure you once were, cracking jokes and breaking the law by ‘forgetting” to send your government sms msg, being in a room with 5 people instead of 4, or saying ‘to hell with face masks’, well now it’s not funny anymore, now, in your upgraded Covid passport,  you are told you could be a walking lethal weapon. Your entertaining stand up routine is over, you must simply remain unseen, invisible and not pose a threat to “the gang.”

Darkness falling

So mother and daughter now wait for darkness to fall, now nocturnal creatures foraging for a pocket of freedom. By day, we are two outlaws looking out from a high tower. Food and vitamin supplements are elevated upwards. We smile weakly and say ‘thank you’ from windows and balconies.

There is no adventure in being “dependent”.  Our distant Prince wields a PCR test but must journey 7-14 days to find us, and until then, we must wait and simply live a life of eerie, surreal detachment. The world goes on outside, regardless. We are simply not allowed to be in it!

There is huge stigma attached to being infected by Covid 19, and despite the fact that we have lived in its gloom for nearly 14 months, the blemish is much deeper. It is not just a virus that can endanger the health of others , it is about projected shadows concerning the economy, politics, inequality, power, insecurity, anger, and doubt.

Anxiety and Covid-19

This has triggered feeling of guilt in my daughter.  Her first reaction to learning she was positive was to have anxiety about my work, her school, her friends. I strongly believe that this is an area of the pandemic where our children need greater support & counseling. Being ill is enough. They shouldn’t be a social scapegoat to explain the rise in cases, when many adults are quite happy to circulate in crowds, with no consequence of their actions.

How many children are downtown in the packed bars and coffee shops, at least of their own choosing?  The more families voice their experience the easier it will be for others to pass through it. Our children go to school every day in fear of these shadows they have no control over.

I have scripted a play for children about the pandemic and its impact on childhood.  I suppose that when I began writing, it was with the optimism of a character that felt the story had an end. I suppose I believed that when it would be shown in theatres, children would laugh in retrospect at the shadowy time that had passed.  I now doubt this to be the case. We simply do not know how long we will endure this period in history, or whether it will simply absorb us and we will adjust to it. And so the story lives and breathes in me still, and I add bits, or chip bits off.

Surviving this pandemic and all the different stages we are passing through, makes me realize more and more that we must develop better strategies at learning to live with our shadows.

Understanding this new world we live in is extremely hard. It is too sudden and imposed, remiss of some sci-fi alien zombie flick. Yet, holding on to a past that is no more, is heart breaking and  soul destroying. Giving up on hope is inhuman and so the waves of cases and covid statistics will continue to rise because we need time to evolve ourselves around this ‘change’.

So where does that leave us?

 I think that illumination must be shed on many shadowy aspects of this pandemic, but unfortunately, in the world we now live in, the concept of truth casts the biggest shadow of all.