Practice (Lubell)

It’s not like I haven’t had enough practice at staying at home over the last 10 years, plagued as I am by a variety of bizarre and disabling ailments. But this, this has been something else. The stew of terror, boredom, the unmooring of time, the exile from my dear ones has come close to doing me in.

Thanks to a drug used to treat my autoimmune disease, I have no ability to make antibodies. To achieve the first of my twin goals of not dying and not losing my mind, I’m no longer leaving the house except for essential doctor visits. (Follow up for lymphoma of the eye--worth it. Seeing derm for my terrible patches of dry skin--not so much). When I did go to the Cleveland Clinic for one of these visits, I found myself terrified by the space, by all the people, by the surfaces pulsing with unseeable viral particles. It’s a bad time to have an anxiety disorder.

I have found refuge in what is for me the strangest of places--Klondike, one of those video games where you build a world, burnish its perfection. There is no incipient fascism, no murder hornets, no disease, and for now it feels more like home than home. How scary is that?

Susan Lubell is a recovering Maoist and disabled physician assistant living in Beachwood, who has learned to look for the sweetness in each day.