Lockdown: The Corona Chronicles

Compiler/publisher note

April 2020 Lockdown, South Africa.

On the 24 March, three days before South Africa hurtled into Lockdown, as a joke, one of my most awarded authors, Pumla Dineo Gqola casually mentioned on our Authors’ WhatsApp Group, that one day we should all write a Coronavirus book. She says she was joking. I took her seriously. 

Within minutes I sent a voice note, giving 17 writers a 10 day deadline. Within days this had shifted to 7 days ... then 6 ... then 5. Everyone agreed. Not sure how that happened. The time in early Lockdown was so intense and crazy that I think none of us really had a choice. I would like to believe that Lockdown, The Corona Chronicles is the fastest book in history, written in 7 days by 17 authors.

While all of us got Locked Down in our homes, fingers flew across keyboards, authors resisted, wailed, bitched but all finally complied. And by Monday, March 30, the book was in for editing and layout.

It’s been madness. It’s been exhilarating. It’s been Corona-crazy.

Thank you my mad, wonderful renegade writers:

Prof Pumla Gqola, Eva Mazza, Lindiwe Hani, Ben Trovato, Dr Ismail Lagardien, Sara-Jayne Makwala King, Helena Kriel, Tracy Going, Kelly Eve-Koopman, Steven Boykey Sidley, Sam Cowen, Gabi Lowe, Letshego Zulu, Christy Chilimigras, Dave Muller, Robert Hamblin.

I love you all, you mad, mad people.

Melinda Ferguson, April 3, 2020

Wounded healers

Melinda Ferguson

To be or not to be. That’s not really a question.—Jean-Luc Godard

Darling, you need to get us some suicide pills. Not toilet paper.

I am sobbing. Stretched out, prostrate. I am a bit of a drama queen. My dude, who, fortunately, is a maverick shrink (thankfully not the Xanax or Seconal pushing kind), is a Virgo. He’s also German. He’s very stable. He’s sometimes as serious as a heart attack. He never lies on the floor having tantrums. Nein, nein, nein. He looks concerned.

Just get some, I wail. "We don’t have to use them right away. Just keep them somewhere safe. ‘Cos if this whole virus thing implodes, if it all goes Italy, if it all goes Walking Dead, at least we know we have a way out."

It’s the day after the President announces that South Africa is in a State of Disaster. I am a disaster. A week later he will announce a nation-wide Lockdown. It sounds like some prison movie. Only, my home is now my enforced Polsmoor.

I’ve been clean and sober for 20 years and 6 months. People often say, Wow you are so strong. They tell me I inspire them. Since I’ve kicked the smack, crack and Jack, I’ve written 6 books and published 45. I like to think of myself as a bit of an alchemist, channeling my addict energy into creativity. Early in the morning, at 4am, when I write and it’s just me and the sound of the birds, I sometimes think I’m god-like. The Creator. I think all artists are.

The fruits of my recovery are hung out for all to see. I’ve long ago restored my relationship with my beautiful sons, who are now 21 and 23. I’ve got a brilliant life and thriving career. Order is my middle name. Control my special gift.

Now, as I lie on the carpet, the man I met five years ago on Tinder, in a heady swipe right, who is at present the only other human in this time of Corona, pats my hand, strokes my forehead. My tears plop. He tells me I have beautiful eyes. But I can tell. Clearly, he thinks I’m losing it.

The last time I thought about ending it, was back in Klerksdorp, in 1997/ 1998/ 1999. A desperate heroin and crack addict, an addicted mother, stuck in a khaki-clad North West province town, I became obsessed with suicide. (I do believe that towns like Klerksdorp, make even the most life-sacrosanct, question their own sanity, and the meaning of their own lives.)

I was, once – a long time ago – an actress, an artist, and a writer. Like the virus of 2020, the drugs sucked me dry. Addiction is like being looped in the same day every day. You know there can be no new endings or beginnings. Withdraw. Score. Use. Withdraw. Score. Use. Now repeat.

Kill yourself became my mantra. It somehow comforted me. It gave me a small reason to keep going, knowing that I could choose. It is always consoling to think of suicide: in the way one gets through many a bad night, said Friedrich Nietzsche.

His contemporary, Freud called the unconscious death wish Thanatos, a competing drive to Eros, the life wish. By the time I was deep in addiction, there was nothing unconscious about my desire to die.

While heavily pregnant with my second son, hippo-clumsy, I tried to strangle myself one night in the laundry. I used a tie. I discovered it’s impossible to suffocate yourself unless you actually hang yourself. Your grip instinctively loosens at a certain point, and then you breathe. Against your will, but still you breathe.

I contemplated swallowing dog tick shampoo. I read the ingredients, but feared I would probably kill my unborn child. I wanted to kill only myself. I cooked up plans to steal my husband’s brother’s gun. (Most people had at least three in that hillbilly town.) I finally slashed my wrist with a broken Coke bottle, but cut my skin across, not down. There is something painfully shameful about failing at your own meticulously planned death. There is something as shameful to admit that one has failed as an artist. At one’s Eros. And that’s what I was. A failed mother, wife, a failed writer.

Those were the dark days which culminated in 1999, just before I hit rock bottom, and where, on the streets of Hillbrow, I lost my mind. Six months later I found my way onto a homeless farm in the Magaliesberg, close to the place where author, Eugène Marais, famous for his book The Soul of the White Ant, killed himself. Like me, he was a morphine addict. Unlike me, who failed dismally at getting death right, he managed to succeed, and kill himself, in March 1936.

Legend has it that on a stormy night, Marais was withdrawing badly. He had run out of gear, and no-one would drive to Pretoria to get him his fix. At around 2am he made his way – through belting rain – to a neighbouring farm, where he asked to borrow a gun to shoot a troublesome snake. Minutes later the neighbour heard two shots. Marais was dead. Vonnegut called suicide: the punctuation mark at the end of many artistic careers.

In the shadow of Bobbejaanskloof, I finally found my knees. I bent, I surrendered. I got clean.

That Fucking Eros won me.

Along my life journey, I have come to believe addiction and Thanatos are one and the same thing. Twenty years later, I thought I’d left that death wish far behind.

It’s 4am, my mind skids awake. I’m spinning. It’s like I’ve been in some kind of car smash. My life and plans are cascading down a drain. Book launches, bestsellers fresh off the press, meetings with industry players, car launches, travel, swanky events, my son’s graduation, the Cape Town Jazz Festival, the Kingsmead and Franschhoek Book Fairs, all of it has evaporated. How is this happening? My mind is like a slug, I can’t catch up with this rollercoaster onslaught. Overnight the virus has sucked my entire life up like some psycho vacuum cleaner. All my reasons, my reasons to wake up and fight for the light, the reasons I stopped hunting oblivion. Gone.

And just like that, the addict voice swoops back. She’s been in hibernation for two decades. You’re fucked, it’s over, what’s the point? … You gave up smack, you gave up crack. All that hard work, just for this! The world is fucked, you are fucked. If it’s all going south, you may as well use.

I know this voice, I have battled her many times. I breathe. Brain’s bursting. I stare into a square of nothingness. I make coffee, answer emails, brush my teeth, brush my hair. I’m shaken. To the cell. I thought I was on firm sobriety ground. WTF. Just yesterday I was the Just For Today poster girl for recovery.

Tuesday and Wednesday drag by. I’m trying to catch up with what’s happening. Watching the news. CNN, eNCA, Aljazeera and Sky. Googling Corona. World Corona stats. How do you get Corona? Corona symptoms. Vaccines for Corona. Corona Conspiracy theories. Was it a bat, a snake, a pangolin, an act of bio-terrorism, a Chinese plot, a US plot? The Simpsons prophesied it. Corona might not yet be in me but she’s all over me. I get progressively frozen, unable to comprehend the enormity of what is happening in my life. South Africa. My country. The world.

Italy is fucked. Spain is fucked. The US is fucked. The UK is fucked. Iran is fucked.

South Africa with its millions of poor and immunocompromised, is going to be super-fucked!

I need to get to a meeting - a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, where I can sit in a circle with my tribe, hug people, and get the monster out of my head. Back in 1999, NA saved my life when I was broken, destitute and on my knees. I know it works.

I soon discover Corona has shut down all real-life 12 Step gatherings.

Oh God.

I WhatsApp Nel, a friend and recovering addict who is a regular NA guy. Do you know about any meetings online?

Within minutes my inbox is flooded with links and schedules. Online NA meetings are all being hosted on Zoom, a virtual meeting chat room app. Usage has skyrocketed in 2020, in the time of Corona, with schools, universities and businesses using it to stay connected. NA meetings across the planet have followed the lead. I get the ID code. I haven’t been to a meeting since I shared my 20th clean birthday in September last year, in the Spring, when the world seemed frivolous, safe and benign.

It’s 3am, SA time. I click on Join Meeting. I type in the code. My heart is beating fast. I’m in! Despite my 20 years of recovery, I feel like a newcomer in a massive room of strangers.

It’s an NA World Marathon meeting, running round the clock. It’s been live for 6 weeks, by the time I join on the 19th of March. An entire 42 days of 24 hours back to back. I see there are 497 addicts currently online. I clasp my hands. I switch up the volume. I listen.

I’ve tuned into the middle of a share. It’s Juan from Madrid. He has just come back from his job at the hospital. He is weeping. He speaks of Corona, of the chaos, of no beds, of no respirators, of the government’s late response to the pandemic, how they only shut things down 5 days ago, how people had ignored the virus, attended soccer matches, just days earlier, hugged and partied, how his home town, Madrid, carried on with business as usual, right until it was too late. Now all he sees are bodies piling up. The old people are being dumped. He tells us he’s got 3 months clean and sober. He is hanging on by a thread. By now he is crying so much he has to end his share.

The chair person, Aron from London, who’s been hosting this meeting for 6 hours straight, looks worn out, but he keeps on buzzing it up. I’m transfixed by the passing of this baton, the torch of recovery, the keeping of flame, where night and day have lost meaning.

Next is Susan in Birmingham. A pale, puffy-faced woman appears on my screen. She’s just relapsed. Both her children have been taken from her by her ex-husband. She’s a mess, berating herself. She says she had 2 years clean, but she’s just gone and messed it all up. She says she’s not coping with the isolation. In the chat box, addicts from all over the world try and encourage her. Keep coming back Susan, You’ve got this girl, Just for Today Susan, you’re in the right place.

I soon realise if I want to add my two cents worth, I need to put my virtual hand up, by way of a little icon that gets you in the queue. I gingerly press it. There are about 40 people in front of me. I have no idea what I want to say. Just terror.

Now it’s Rene in LA, California’s turn. Hello family, he booms. By the grace of God I am 14 years clean and sober. He says he needs to talk about his behaviour, how he’s still sneaking around, he’s still telling lies, still doing things he did as an addict. While he’s stopped using crack, he’s still buying parts for his Harley like an addict, not telling his wife. It’s a relief to escape Juan’s pain in Spain, and Susan’s losses. Rene is funny. I smile. I’m feeling at home. I click down my virtual hand, and decide instead to listen.

The chair moves on to Phyllis in the Bronx, New York. It’s 3am, East Coast time. Phyllis is a 65-year-old African American women with 26 years of