For months now, we have been living in an unprecedented situation. Not just in our city, not just in Bulgaria — the entire world has changed beyond recognition in an absurdly short time. The change is chaotic, with no logic, no predictability, no room to plan even a single step ahead.

The first lockdown was unexpected and shocking, catching us completely unprepared at the level of the state, society, companies, and the individual. We had to cope and adapt on the fly to a situation that just hours earlier had seemed like a science fiction plot and absolutely unthinkable in real life. Difficult decisions were being made, processes were being reconfigured, and everyone was learning to live a new life in this new and completely unfamiliar reality. And all of this was made even more complicated by the fact that we did not know what we were facing, what to watch out for, what to protect ourselves from, where to expect the thing we needed to protect ourselves from, and most importantly — how to keep ourselves safe.

Now we are crossing the threshold of another lockdown. We face our growing fears again: of illness, of isolation, of adapting to a completely unfamiliar format of life, of lack of communication, of lack of social contact, of deprivation in every possible aspect. Of the threat of having to live a life that has nothing to do with our own again.

And alongside the virus, wandering through the chaos, we initially did not even realise that the psychological pandemic was setting in far more decisively, ruthlessly, and ubiquitously, striking absolutely everyone.

The fatigue from the pandemic is what drains us long before anything else. The fatigue of listening to numbers every day, multiple times, growing numbers containing vaguely threatening information. The information itself is exhausting — streams of diametrically opposed messages, mutually exclusive claims, and the realisation that the only certain and clear thing is that nothing is clear to anyone.

The fatigue is also in the uncertainty we experience in all its manifestations. In the inability to make plans even a few days ahead, in the anxious anticipation of the evening news, in the uncertainty about our jobs, our incomes, our future as individuals, as a society, even as humanity. The uncertainty, passing even strangers on the street.

The pandemic took away our sense of closeness and made us fear each other, to feel like a threat to one another.

The fatigue is in the fear for our loved ones and for ourselves. In the fear of anticipating each new “tomorrow.”

The situation unleashed in us all kinds of rational and irrational fears, which in turn block even the last faint sense of living a real life, rather than a surreal film directed by David Lynch.

Fatigue, alienation, uncertainty, fear, apathy — the psychological pandemic turns out to be no less terrifying and strikes relentlessly.

And what is the vaccine for it?

Let us limit the flow of information coming our way that does not make us feel more informed, only more lost in it. This is stress that we simply do not need.

Let us not stop contact with people — one of the benefits of the situation is that we have mastered countless online and offline ways to do so. Let us not stop communicating, let us not stop maintaining contact with our loved ones, friends, colleagues, acquaintances. Let us speak openly about our anxieties, about how we feel. Suppressing negative feelings does not make them disappear, it only makes them torment us more.

Let us laugh more! Not just stop stopping, but do more of the things that make us smile and make us happy. Let us fill the time freed from our daily routine with them and with a host of others we had been postponing for some indefinite future. When did you last read a book? Have you tried yoga? And that Spanish course, how long have you been putting it off for lack of time? Have you managed to overcome yourself and exercise at home?

Let us not block ourselves with our own fears, let us think rationally and critically, let us be responsible towards ourselves and others, and let us limit our “surrender” to the virus with the only proven working mantra for now: “Distance, disinfection, discipline.”

The good news? There is such a thing

It turned out that the little boxes we had self-isolated in until recently are not enough for us. We need air, sun, interaction with nature, movement, people, face-to-face communication, live contact, seeing smiles rather than masks. And on the day we can do it — see each other, shake hands, hug, without anxiety, without fear — we will feel truly happy and capable of seeking and appreciating the smallest things. And we will do it with genuine need, purposefully, and consciously.

We will feel closer, because we will have gone through all of this together