When Coronavirus arrived, I had already experienced another pandemic: the 2009 AH1N1 “swine flu” outbreak. I was in elementary school; there were a few weeks of panic, alarming news and a temporary lockdown, but a vaccine was found and produced in a relatively short period of time and that was it. That’s why at first, I didn’t really worry that much and just thought the disease would be contained within a couple of months. Yeah, sure. I think if last year someone had told me how 2020 was going to turn out, I would have laughed. “It couldn’t be that bad”, I can imagine myself saying. But it was, it is.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak, life has totally changed. I know it sounds silly to say something so obvious but every time I think about it, I still find it unbelievable, almost surreal. I live in Mexico City. Here, we first heard about Covid-19 in February. I remember feeling a slight concern but thinking the problem was very far away and that the virus would be under control before it reached Latin America or Mexico or my family. Fast forward and we’re living this extraordinary situation nobody ever thought we would face.
A lot has happened since February. We already stopped counting the infected and the dead. The lockdown is still in effect although a lot of people are already out on the streets. Some of them because they have no choice, but a lot because they don’t care or believe the virus really exists, even though most of the city’s public hospitals are flooded with out-of-breath people and corpses. Fear, rumors, misinformation and fake news keep circulating in social media and conversations. Politicians statements, strategies and numbers are now just fit for memes (not that in this country they were ever fit for anything else, but I do think at first a lot of people really trusted the authorities would do what it took to keep us safe). By now, thousands (if not millions) have lost their loved ones, homes and jobs while apparently all there’s left to do is wait and hope we’re not next.
Adapting to this new reality has been hard. For me, it has meant isolation, anxiety, a 30% pay cut that has me applying for jobs like crazy, the death of my uncle and a lot of concern for the rest of my family. At times, the feeling of precariousness and helplessness becomes overwhelming because, in this country, private medical attention for a few days can go up to a year of my salary and the public healthcare system is so oversaturated and poorly managed that people die because of the lack of available beds in the hospitals. However, one has to go to the supermarket or to walk the dogs or just do the small tasks of daily life. And the only thing left to do is wear a mask, hope everyone around does and try not to think about all the possible ways you can get infected.
This pandemic has also meant that I have a lot more time for my own projects (as my work load was also cut). You could think a quarantine and the shutdown of all of the non-essential activities would be a dream come true for a writer, that you would have lots of hours for writing and research and creativity. But nobody tells you how exhausting fear, uncertainty and loneliness really are. Nevertheless, I try to keep my mind busy and focused on my goals and projects. Being creative has been hard and words don’t come easily, but writing is still one of the anchors that keep me sane, purposeful and aspiring.
Currently, I’m working on the final steps of the process of publishing my first book —a collection of short stories titled Sapos en la lluvia (Toads in the rain)— and in another collection of short stories whose intention is to address the marginality of women throughout the perspective of stigmatic characters such as witches or prostitutes, but also “ordinary” women on the periphery of urban and rural Mexican settings. The book’s objective is to approach the social context of these women and to examine their daily life with all its shades and nuances.
Con el diablo en el cuerpo by Esther Cohen.
La caída de las brujas by Alan Ojeda.
Las hijas de Lilith by Erika Bornay
The Penguin Book of Witches. Chilling real-life accounts of witches, from medieval Europe through colonial America by Katherine Howe.
