What the Pandemic Did to My Mind

I became aware of a fault line forming in my mind as reports of a spreading viral infection appeared in the news. I was on vacation in Guatemala in February 2020, a welcome break from my busy psychoanalytic practice in Calgary. I arrived eager to study a new language and explore the colonial city of Antigua. I also happened to be vacationing in a country balanced on a fault line and ravaged by forces of nature as well as politics. Antigua bore the mark of disasters in its ruined but atmospheric facades. It was in this most vulnerable of locales that I felt the shifting of tectonic plates in my mind as COVID-19 went viral in the space of only a few weeks.

The tremors in my psyche were signaled by a strange aversion to reading. I was perplexed, as I am a voracious reader while on vacation, reveling in the opportunity to escape into thrillers or to delve into the next picks for my book club. However, to my astonishment, linking words together on the page became arduous. My paperbacks languished. In retrospect, my mind was starting to alter, under pressure from a world of stealth particles that had become threats to my thinking.

My sense of disorientation was no doubt magnified by being far from home and immersed in novelty. My crisp, early-morning walks to the language school couldn't have been more different from my daily trips to my office in winter-clad, resource-rich Calgary. I passed through cobblestone streets vivid with purple jacaranda blossoms and ruined facades of earthquake-torn buildings, all overseen by volcanoes keeping a rumbling watch over the city. The smell of tortillas frying in hole-in-the-wall shops filled the air, as bevies of uniformed children chattered on their way to school. My husband and I met daily with our Spanish tutor, Anna, under leafy trees in a little park full of international students sitting at tables with their local teachers. The chirp of Spanish words rose to join the chorus of birds