MAY | 2020 | FRONT PAGE

AGAINST THE ANGST

You’d have to have been living under a rock to not know the impact that COVID-19 has had on the nation and world abroad. Life under a rock doesn’t sound so bad at this moment in time as it’s probably the safest place any of us can be in the current environment. Life lived above the rocks has been filled with a myriad of events over the past few weeks, and it’s placed the vast majority of us in positions we’ve never envisioned ourselves being in. The personal has become dangerous, and the only thing more haunting than the emptiness of the roads during our morning commutes is the irony to be found in the phrase “social distancing”.

The psychic impact of the anxiety we’re experiencing is palpable to say the least. Many of us are inches away from losing our natural born minds as we desperately await the end of our pandemic imposed solitudes. The first few days of this shit may have been cute, but the attraction of it all has long since faded. The 24 hour news coverage, financial and economic uncertainty, and the tedious precautions we’ve implemented as we seek to avoid becoming one of COVID’s next cases has been maddening, and has, if nothing else, increased our levels of anxiety. 

The most common misconception about us, as black men, is that we’ve divorced ourselves from every emotion except rage. While this may be true for some of us, the remaining majority don’t necessarily exist within that reality. Regardless of whether or not we’re as rage filled as some would assume, the one thing that all black men have in common is anxiety. She’s never been “new” to us. The combined factors of our race and sexuality have given us all reasons to be anxious. Whether it’s the uncertainty we felt before coming out to our family and friends, being rejected and treated as ‘other’ in the event that everything went left after we finally did come out, or as a result of the racism, prejudice, and everything else that comes with being SGL and of color, we’ve all had our fair share of experiences with anxiety. 

Our relationship with anxiety may be the longest commitment we’ve made to date, and COVID has given it yet another reason to rear its unwelcomed head. Because some of us are still navigating the roads of coping with the anxiety we suffer from under normal circumstances, the current environment has given us the opportunity to spend a little time exploring ways we can cope with the newest branch of our tree of anxiety.

The first thing we all need to realize is the differences existing between the things we can control and the things we can’t. We can’t control the 330,000 cases of COVID, or the fact that number may have doubled by the time this has been posted. We can’t control that we had to cancel whatever trips we had planned, the closing of our favorite restaurants and bars, or that the only places open for business are Target, Walmart, and the local gas station. Worrying about these things only feeds our anxiety, and it doesn’t need to be fed, it needs to be managed.

Managing our anxiety requires that we focus on the shit we can control, to focus on the things we can do to keep ourselves out of the way of physical and mental harm. Now is the time for us to devote our attention to doing the things we’re normally interested in doing, but don’t have the time to do. Maybe we could start and actually finish that book we picked up in 2017, engage in some spring cleaning, or catch up on the archived content at reignbeauxlux.com! 

The moments we spend binging shows on Netflix, watching barbering tutorials on YouTube, cleaning that one catch-all drawer that we all have somewhere in our homes, and in organizing our admirable porn collections, are moments spent outside of our anxiety’s reach. The most important thing about these, or any other activities we engage in as we wait for them to open outside, is that they are within our control. 

Don’t confuse any of this with ignoring the situation at hand. Of course our concerns about our health, the health of our friends and family, and our finances deserve our attention, but if we can walk and chew gum at the same time, then we can certainly mitigate our anxiety to the extent that our concerns don’t impact our mental health. The panic, sleeplessness, and irritability that follow our anxiety are not our friends. They essentially lead to increased amounts of themselves, which, ironically, leads to more anxiety. Devoting our attention from COVID can be a difficult thing when it’s all we see and hear throughout the course of our days.

The virus has caused us all the change in one way or another, and changes almost always lead to uncertainty. We can counter our feelings of uncertainty by engaging ourselves in the aspects of our lives that can’t, don’t, or won’t change anytime soon. If our relationships with those we care for, our routines, and our pets are as static as they are solid, then we should use this period of time to lean on them and the comfort they provide. 

The last piece of this is us identifying and challenging the root of our anxiety. While we should all be anxious about catching a virus that could take us out in a matter of days, about losing our friends and family members to it, and about our current financial situations, the probability of these being the actual root of our anxiety, is slim. Maybe the root isn’t about us contracting the virus, but about us dying from it. Death will be the inevitable end for us all, but we probably wouldn’t be as anxious about it if we spent more time doing the things we want to do while we’re alive. None of us can predict the day we’ll die, just like we can’t predict the exact time and date that someone we care about will. This is why its important for us to make each moment count.

Similarly, the anxiety we feel about our current financial situation may be more related to the challenges we have providing for ourselves under normal circumstances. Our anxieties are often triggered as a result of stress, and there are very few things capable of outranking our financial situations, health and mortality, and the health and mortality of our loved ones. Identifying and challenging the roots of these things will go a long way to reducing or eliminating our anxiety during and beyond this pandemic. 

There is not a single person on Earth who can attest to not feeling the effects of this pandemic. Our collective concerns about our vulnerability, our health, the health of our family and friends, and the actual impact this pandemic will have on our financial houses is enough to trigger anyone’s anxiety, especially when we’re constantly being bombarded with updates from the ever present media. However, realizing and accepting what we can and cannot control, focusing on the things that we can, and identifying the causes of our COVID related anxiety are effective in keeping ourselves from going overboard as we commit ourselves to going against the angst.