Crowds

I’ve generally avoided news and politics, trying to keep this a personal blog. You already have your own sources for national and world news. Also my motto for this blog is, “The lighter side of life – staying in touch with friends and family by celebrating the ordinary.”

But then I got cancer, and although it has its lighter moments, cancer isn’t generally a light subject. And I couldn’t imagine trying to write an authentic blog without including the cancer. And then there’s the coronavirus, which is not just a news item; it is permeating my life the same as it’s permeating everyone’s life.

Now there’s the protests. I know you have your own news sources, but here is an excerpt from my local newsletter this morning, which I always read while feeding the dogs. I stand over them to make sure they don’t steal each other’s food, one eye on my newsletter on my phone, the other eye watching out for dogs straying from their appointed food bowls.

“What began as a peaceful protest last night over a statue of Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate at the Albuquerque Museum ended with one protester shot. The shooting occurred amid conflict between protesters and armed civilians known as the New Mexico Civil Guard, which escalated after protesters initiated attempts to topple the statue. The Albuquerque protest echoed actions across the country to remove various confederate monuments and other tributes to slave owners and colonialist figures. Oñate, a colonial governor during New Mexico’s 16th-century, murdered 800 members of Acoma Pueblo, cut off the foot of at least two dozen captives and was eventually exiled from the state for his violence…Albuquerque Police reported late last night the victim was in critical but stable condition.”

I’m not posting that just because it’s news. It hit the national news and you probably already saw it anyway. I’m posting that because I use this blog to communicate how I’m doing. And I’m not doing very well. I’m fairly upset right now.

I haven’t been going to the protests. I feel guilty about it, and my handy explanation is I’m immunocompromised from the chemo. But there’s also another reason. I am afraid of crowds. I can barely handle friendly crowds. I can’t imagine dealing with crowds with guys with guns.

In the past my crowd aversion hasn’t been a serious affliction. For example, I enjoy concerts – but only if they are outdoors or we have assigned seats. I grit my teeth and deal with Thanksgiving crowds in the grocery store. I wait at crowded gates in airports, unhappy but managing. I can’t stand flying, but I do it anyway.

The only time I can remember just sort of completely losing it, was in a fairly extreme crowd situation. Five years ago, in June of 2015, Laura and I went to the San Francisco Pride Parade. This was immediately after the Supreme Court had ruled that the constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage. The mood was intense, celebratory, and the crowds were huge.

We took the BART into downtown. At the time we lived on the far edge of the Bay Area, so it was a long trip. The BART was completely overrun with people trying to get to the parade.

There are no bathrooms on the train, and many of the stations don’t have bathrooms either (the BART system is gross, disgusting and dangerous in my opinion, but I didn’t want to drive and parking would have been impossible). Our trip started out with long lines for the restroom, at one of the few stations that have them, with many women (including Laura and I), giving up on ever making it into the women’s and storming the nearly-empty men’s room instead (talk about disgustingly grimy, ugh).

We were most of the way through the train trip when it stopped unexpectedly in the tunnels (it goes under the bay, which I find to be psychologically difficult). Going under the bay is hard enough, but to be stopped under there is even harder, and we had no way to know how long we’d be trapped under the bay on a crowded train.

The train eventually started moving again and we reached our station. As we walked up the stairs and burst out onto the street level, we were suddenly amongst an insane number of people, bright colors, and noise. Thousands of people were dressed up in crazy costumes waving banners and reveling.

(If you’re sort of panicking right now, looking at all these people without masks or distancing, remember, this was from 5 years ago, before COVID, back when we all breathed each other’s breath and put our hands all over everything that everyone else was touching too – ewww, yuck.)

Some marchers were family oriented.

Others were hardly dressed.

I backed off to the edge of the crowds, next to a low crowd barrier, and adjusted my backpack, putting away my sweater and getting out my water bottle.

Soon after, I discovered that I had lost my phone. Most of us have done that at some point, but it’s always a freak-out moment when it happens. I carry my credit card and my driver’s license in my phone case, so all that was gone. Completely gone. There were thousands and thousands of people there, and I had no idea why I no longer had my phone and no clue as to what to do next. I ran back to look for it, but of course I didn’t find it.

It’s hard to believe, but I got my phone back after about half an hour. I had dropped it on the other side of the crowd barrier into a patio seating area belonging to a restaurant that had not yet opened for the day. My lost phone couldn’t be seen from the street. A restaurant worker found it, and answered it when Laura called it. It was a huge relief to get my phone back, but by that time my nerves were shot.

I was trying to stay on the edges of the crowds, but Laura wanted a glimpse of the plaza. And it was hard to gauge where the crowd barriers were and exactly where the “edges” were. At one point we accidentally got funneled between two chain link fences which narrowed down into a chute, forcing the crowd together, and there was no escape. We were smashed together, not just an occasional brush of an elbow, but rather a mass of people all shoved up tightly against each other, and there was no option other to be carried along with the crowd. As I was pressed on all sides by strangers, I just focused on keeping my breathing low and slow and not fighting the situation.

I made it through the choke point, but when we were free to move again, I simply took off running. Laura had to chase me down. She found a little outdoor deli a couple blocks from the crowds and sat me down and made me eat something. It was like a different world – an empty plaza only a block or two from the madness.

We sat there for awhile before I could consider getting on the BART to go home.

This is embarrassing to write about it, but I think we need to be more open about these kinds of things in our lives. I do not have any known mental illnesses. I probably have PTSD from some difficulties in my childhood, which aren’t related to crowds, but the psyche is a strange thing. I also probably have a touch of autism, and people on the spectrum can get overwhelmed sometimes. Regardless of what I may or may not have and why – my point is that sometimes fairly normal, professional, productive, stable people find themselves in a situation that’s too much for them.

This all leads up to what I was going to say about chemo symptoms and Friday. Actually, this post is getting overly long and it’s dinner time. I will write about Friday in my next post. Stay tuned…

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