How it feels to be a germaphobe during a global pandemic

Hi. I’m Erin, and I’m a germaphobe.

I find the everyday interactions of life fraught with dangerous microscopic critters hell-bent on making us sick, miserable, or dead. And that was before we were living through a time when a brand new germ figured out a very effective means to end us. I was already a frequent hand-washer and rare face-toucher, so this extraordinary time, like everything else under the sun, has its upsides and its downsides. 

Let’s talk about it. 

I should say, I haven’t always been a germaphobe. I grew up running through the grass, eating dirt, and playing in mud puddles just like you. As I developed more and more allergies, those experiences became less and less safe (or appealing), and I became an indoor person.

Then, a few years back, I got a nasty bout of food poisoning/stomach virus for my birthday. To this day, I still don’t know what caused it. 

As I tried desperately to return that bug for eight hours straight, I begged the toilet, my new best friend, for at least a speedy death. 

I recovered, but the savage way it came for me — out of the blue — changed my feelings about germs. They felt much more predatory. I was then working in a job where missing a single day for any reason was incredibly problematic and strongly discouraged. If I think about it, I’ve had several jobs over the years where your warm body needed to just show up no matter what.

That 2016 illness tipped me over the edge in a life where I have frequently tried to control the uncontrollables through magical thinking. “If I do this, I won’t get sick because I can’t get sick.” My near pathological fear of illness is something I would gladly trade in — any time, any day. 

But, even the thing we’d change first about ourselves has some good moments, if you choose to look at them that way. 

The good 

I now look and feel a little less insane most of the time. Hey…

Because I am sometimes afraid to leave the house right now, my closet has never been more organized. And the bookshelves. And the coffee table. Stress tidying and rearranging was so real in April, wasn’t it?

Through re-organizing my kitchen, I rediscovered both my baking sheets and my love of roasted potatoes and roasted turkey. Seriously. The heat will be the only reason I have to scale back on these super easy-to-cook goodies that keep beautifully. 

I have found that through all of this, people can be so kind. Everyone is smiling with their eyes right now over masks and through plexiglass. I get to say hello twice a week to the lovely girl who monitors the self-checkout at my grocery store. She doesn’t judge me for shopping in my own tote bags — or does so silently — so I don’t have to touch the carts or baskets.

I know they are sanitized, but I am all about reducing points of contact. 

It’s also pretty great that you non-germaphobes are noticing things that you never did before. You are now a little freaked out by ATM pin pads or card readers at the grocery store, just like me. You also want a tissue in hand as a buffer to touching elevator buttons and doorknobs at the office.

And you aren’t picking up apples in the grocery store, putting them up to your face to smell them, then putting them back down on the stack nearly as often — only to repeat the process. That’s not cool. Humans are covered in germs, and our hands (having handled our phones and handbags) are excellent purveyors of pathogens.

It’s good that out of this, everyone is now more aware of germs and doing what they can to prevent the spread of the creepy crawlies. 

The bad 

Sometimes folks are still confused about how this all works. I watched a YouTube influencer unbox a bunch of packages from Amazon, et al, this week. She put on a pair of gloves, turned to the camera, and asked “are we still doing gloves?” She then proceeded to open the boxes, touch all of the stuff inside all of the boxes, then her hair, her face, and her phone over the course of the 10-minute sequence. Now, if COVID-19 lives on the outside of cardboard boxes for the 24 hours we’ve been told, every single thing she touched is contaminated — except her hands. Gloves only serve to protect your bare hands, not all the things you touch with the gloves on after you touch a point of contaminated contact. For the record, I only use gloves when I take out my trash. Bare hands in a coronavirus world are very clarifying. 

“I am stressed all the time. I can lose an entire hour sitting on my sofa just staring at the news.”

I am stressed all the time. I can lose an entire hour sitting on my sofa just staring at the news thinking about what might happen if someone I love gets sick. Or if I do. I am my own backup, so there’s nobody to care for me or run to the pharmacy if I’m too sick to get there. That keeps me up at night.

I worry about the usual germs becoming superbugs because we’re all wiping everything down with anti-bacterial wipes and using hand sanitizer. I wake up in the middle of the night to work out what I’d do if I ran out of these precious supplies.

I’m in pretty great health, but I do have to deal with Celiac disease — an autoimmune disorder that causes damage to my body when I consume gluten — and dangerous food allergies. Been that way for years, been managing it pretty damn well for most of them.

But, like you, finding the food that I want to eat has proven tougher than usual for the last several months. Except I mostly don’t have the luxury of choosing another brand or item to eat. There just aren’t that many gluten-free oatmeals, crackers, or breads out there (that aren’t completely disgusting). Don’t get me wrong, they’re all a disappointment. Now, I make my own bread. But stress baking is a tale for another time. 

I have taken to doing a little stockpiling — or becoming an Accidental Prepper as my friend, Katy, calls it — just in case. Just in case. That’s how my mom, a WWII baby, grocery shopped. “Just in case. You never know when you’ll need an extra can of soup.”

She was so right. 

The ugly 

Some days, I take two showers and wash my hair twice because of concerns of what I might have accidentally touched or been exposed to. I’ve gone through entire canisters of wipes sanitizing my space after the plumbers who fixed my sink faucet — with little hope of finding more at the store anytime soon.

I’m not in a relationship right now, and my nearby family is all in the danger zone when it comes to contracting deadly respiratory infections. For most, COVID-19 might mean a fever and a cough. For my family, it might mean the ICU and a ventilator. For me, it remains an unknown. I haven’t seen my family since March 15, just in case. Or friends. My close friend group is small, and it’s been tough to figure out how to keep in touch in meaningful ways.

So, that means I haven’t had physical contact with another human being since that weekend. I haven’t had a face-to-face conversation with someone I love for months. 

That takes a toll. It makes you very aware of your solitude, and that extended aloneness sometimes turns into loneliness. And loneliness is hard on the heart (among other things). For an introvert to say she misses people… that’s pretty serious. This lack of human contact and sadness is likely a part of why I find myself feeling so disengaged from the things I love to do for fun. 

“Like soap, joy has been tough to get my hands on these days.”

Like soap, joy has been tough to get my hands on these days. I’m not someone who looks forward to a long soak in a hot tub. Or getting in a workout for the endorphins. I love to escape into the otherness of films. But, over three months, I’ve watched exactly three movies all the way through. (BTW, The Lovebirds on Netflix is fun.) For someone who watched 26 movies in 27 days this winter for my annual Oscar Binge, that’s... unusual. I’m usually an avid reader. Since March, I have bought, skimmed two or three pages of, and then bookmarked exactly nine books. The Cooking Gene, I promise, I’ll get back to you.

But, for now at least, my gnat-like attention span is a better fit for scrolling through magazine articles and YouTube videos. It’s surprisingly soothing to fall down that Up Next rabbit hole right now. 

What’s next

Look, I don’t know what the future holds, or what this virus has planned for us. Or what the rest of 2020 has in store. Or how I’ll react to it. But, for now, I’ll stay home, wipe things down, be gentle with myself, and hope for the best. And I’ll take some solace in smiling eyes, the kindness of strangers, the tagalong ketchup that ends up on my turkey, friends I get to see over the FaceTime and chats — and look forward to tea on a patio sometime where I can see their faces and hug them.