Falling Out of the World

Abstract

This article is a personal account of how the coronavirus pandemic triggered the mobilization of childhood defenses first employed when I fell victim to the polio epidemic. The article describes commonalities between the experience of polio and my own and others’ reactions to the pandemic—the collapse of time, the lapse into numbness and passivity, the management of mortal fear through denial and dissociation, and the reentry into a changed world. When a terrible illness threatens one’s body, there is a crack in the fantasy of omnipotence, of physical resilience, of a promising future. The article’s title went through several iterations. The first was Staying Alive, which accurately reflected a nearly universal preoccupation of the past 3 years. The second attempt stated the core premise of the article, The Events That Change Us. The present title, Falling Out of the World, dares to name the deeper premise of the article—how traumatic events can result in our no longer having access to the world we formerly inhabited. There is no return to normal.