My pandemic stressors

Jul 11, 2020 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

It was a draining, depletive, even frightening experience, nightmarish in its proportions, which left me sleepless and deeply unsettled – unintelligibly.
But last night’s psychological turmoil, as it turned out, erupted from real day-to-day experiences over recent past weeks, and up to the evening of July 02. I could never have conceived that individually and collectively they had plumbed my subconscious so deeply.
The first scenario had to do with my futile engagement with a bank, with which I have been associated since it was opened in this country; than whose managers and employees am decades older. They insist that after all this time, they would no longer honour my cheques issued to payees that hold no accounts with them, despite the fact that the latter would have been the same recipients over the years. The reason given was to avoid/contain the COVID-19 infection – a reason with which I am still grappling. How does having an account at any bank becomes a successful intervention against any infection?
Unfortunately, over the weeks of exchanges, and despite its international proclamation to provide special assistance to ‘senior’ customers like myself, my representation was dismissed, with a warning that this ‘senior’ customer would not be listened to again.
In the meantime, appeals to related agencies have fallen on deaf ears. The Central Bank has not even acknowledged my submission thereto. (En passant, I have always bemused myself that organisations of such importance would have an automatic system of acknowledging even (wayward) correspondence). Until last night, I did not realise that such an organisational performance deficit had also insinuated itself into my subliminal state of stress.
As it turned out similar submissions to legal colleagues did not appear to impress. Was I then exceptionally incoherent?
As if to compound my confusion, and in a separate vein, the newspaper with which I have related over decades, has recently refused to publish my letters to the Editor, as well as to commit to an explanation therefore. Another demoralising experience.
But if the foregoing provided the ingredients for a cake of some kind, the tasteless icing recalled was in the form of having this loner’s TV companionship suspended – the reason stated mutely on the screen that ‘the channel was not subscribed to’. A number was provided to call. So I did, only to be greeted by a recording advising that there would be a seven minute wait. I gave up after 20 minutes actually, having listened to repetitious recordings of how great the agency was and how caring it was of ‘valued customers’. My ineptitude forced resort to a young visiting family member with his adept cell phone was able to reach another more responsive number at the Network, on which a live person admitted that they had mistakenly terminated a service which in fact had been fully subscribed.
Although reunited with my regular channels, I could not help reflecting on the further implications of this age of robotics, and the automatic distancing between live animals, some of whom are also human beings.
In desperate aloneness, I found that increasingly, I had to resign myself to the admission of my incapacity to grapple with the challenges of this technological pandemic which had stressed me into a truly psychological nightmare.
I am hoping that in the absence of any counselling resource, this exposition will help to restore my sense of balance, while earning some sympathy from colleagues and other readers, that however disjointed may be the aforementioned scenarios, they compose a canvass that, for a night at least, overcame a single unsupported spiritual psyche.
But my immediate apology goes out to my neighbours who would have heard my wakeful shouting Help! Help!
Please bear with me.

Distraught

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