A Moment of Honesty

This post is for those of us struggling with quarantine and feeling guilty about it. If you’re like me, you’ve probably been vacillating between knowing how much quarantine has troubled you, but trying to shush yourself since there are other people out there with “real problems”. Well guess what, every problem is a real problem, so welcome, my troubled friend.

When it comes to my interior movement these days, there's not even a back and forth I can describe - no going between two different emotions like a high and a low. No, I'm just all over the place.

Some days I'm mad; other days I'm content and can see God at work even in the mess. And then other days I feel like an ungrateful first world brat because I'm constantly complaining about my own discomfort. Sometimes I even get to experience all of that in a single day. But every day I start over by reminding myself that it's okay to feel whatever I'm feeling and that minimizing my hurt isn't going to help anyone. In fact, it would only be detrimental to me and the people around me (or in front of me on a screen).

While I may not be working on the front lines accompanying the sick and dying, or losing loved ones from across the miles without a chance to say goodbye, there are losses and challenges in my own daily life that I must acknowledge, even as I work from home, virus-free and well-fed. My pain doesn't have to look like somebody else's pain to count, and neither does yours.

I first started to notice that I was feeling angry after spending two weeks in quarantine. I came back to my convent in Pittsburgh halfway through March after traveling to California for a few different events. As I left California, schools, restaurants and movie theaters slowly began to close their doors.

Upon arriving in Pittsburgh, I spent 14 days in quarantine because the sister I live with is immunocompromised. She stayed at another convent while I stayed at ours alone. At first I thought I would enjoy it and that I’d finally have a chance to catch up on all the sleep and downtime I could have ever dreamed of. Instead, I found myself staying awake until the sun came up on some nights and simply waiting for the days to end because every hour felt heavy and empty all at once.

I went from spending time with people constantly to having absolutely no human interaction except for the single day I went to the grocery store. Even as an introvert I felt myself drained of all energy. I was fed up with Zoom calls already and didn’t even want to respond to texts or phone calls anymore. I have never experienced clinical depression, but I’m pretty sure that was the closest I have ever come. And all it took was 14 days.

It was hard to understand why I felt so lethargic, but looking back on it, I realize I was grieving. I had just lost my life in the way I had known it for the 33 years I’ve been alive. Not only that, but going from constant interaction to zero interaction was like jumping into a water so cold it lunged at every cell in my body. If the coronavirus could attack the lungs of my heart, that’s what it felt like.

Not only did my calendar go empty - which was once so full I could barely understand how I actually made it to appointments without double-booking myself - but my days did as well. For 14 days I had absolutely no reason to get up in the morning. Since I am a religious sister, people might wonder, “Isn’t Jesus your reason for getting up every day?” Well yes, but for me the idea of Jesus being present “where two or three are gathered together in [his] name” is very much a reality (Mt. 18:20). I may be an introvert, but I love people because I find the Jesus I love among them.

My days were empty of activity, which meant they were empty of people, which in turn made me feel like they were empty of purpose. I was grateful for God’s invitation during this time to look at my days and how I spent them - not just in the past, but in the present. It brought to mind thoughts and questions around the idea of meaning and purpose. Having a full calendar and days overflowing with activity once told me I had a purpose. As all of that disappeared, how was I supposed to believe my life still had purpose? I knew it was a chance for transformation, and yet it was still very painful.

When it was time for the sister I live with to return home, my mixed emotions continued. I wanted company, but her return to our convent wasn’t going to change anything. It made me angry. Fortunately for me she is very patient and understanding because she was the only one around and thus became the object of my frustration.

Throughout Holy Week I continued to fume about all that was disappearing in my life - friend’s weddings, vocation events, gatherings in new and exciting places, a spiritual retreat in the desert, time with my family in New Mexico, outings of any kind - while at the same time feeling like I shouldn’t complain since other people had bigger problems. But when the resurrection of Easter began to uncurl the tightness in my chest, I could begin to see my own “problems” were also very real. Slowly, very slowly, I started to acknowledge the losses and let go. It was like watching new life take root after a forest fire even as the ash is still falling.

Contemplating the process of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly began to help me understand transformation on a deeper level. What first stood out to me was how the caterpillar becomes an absolute mess in the cocoon. Kirstin Vanlierde describes it well in a post on medium.com entitled, “A Little Story on Death and Resurrection”: In order to become a butterfly, the caterpillar has to fall apart completely, decompose down to its very essence, devoid of any shape or consciousness. It literally dies. There is nothing left of it. And from this ... essence, the butterfly starts to put itself together, from scratch.

I had no problem identifying with that. There was a darkness in this time that seemed to be both painful and healing. It was causing me to question everything, down to whether or not my life had any purpose anymore; but it was also helping me to value life in ways I never had.

Secondly, I once heard that sometimes caterpillars delay their process of becoming a chrysalis. For whatever reason, when the time comes they do not begin the process and can even put it off for up to a year. Do they know what’s coming? Do they know they will be completely undone? Maybe they sense a change in the air and, like most of us, do whatever they can to avoid it.

This time, though, none of us could avoid the change. We couldn’t even try to delay it. Here we are now, in a global cocoon, with our lives coming undone.

We have all lost something. Maybe it’s health, maybe a loved one or a friend, maybe a “right of passage” ceremony, like graduation or Baptism. So let yourself grieve. Your loss doesn’t have to be the same as someone else’s loss to be painful. You’re allowed to be angry, hurt, disappointed, scared, lonely, anxious, sad, or any other kind of emotion labeled as “negative”. Allow the arteries of your spirit to open up so that healing can begin. Maybe some days we will experience depression unlike anything we’ve ever felt; maybe some days we’ll feel a hope as real and grand as the sun itself. No matter what, every day is a day closer to healing.

Maybe we’ll never arrive at the life we once had, but we’ll arrive somewhere. The caterpillar doesn’t know what’s on the other side of its cocoon, and we don’t know what’s on the other side of ours - but if God’s patterns reveal themselves time and again in nature, then coming undone completely means eventually we’ll get to fly.

Sister Desiré Anne-Marie Findlay