‘Down the Rabbit Hole’
“One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth doing is what we do for others.” — Lewis Carroll
“For me, it all began with the thought of a rabbit: Alice’s white rabbit from Lewis Carroll’s 1865 book, ‘Through the Looking Glass,’ and how Alice was this curious girl who took chances. Especially into the dark tunnel of the unknown. I respected and related to that more than once in my life, and importantly, during quarantine from COVID-19. Learning to take chances, whether I jump, hop or leap. (Thanks, bunny, it’s infectious.) I’d bypassed the 3-inch caterpillar, Absolem, with his magical mushrooms and hookah, and the ever-grinning and disappearing Cheshire Cat. (It’s that grin plus the teeth — creepy.)
“So the shutdown eventually became mandatory. I already knew how to be isolated and in a dark place. Easy peasy. And when it was announced that consent to travel was needed for essential workers, things really began to snap into place. The easy peasy part for me is clinical depression and anxiety disorder. I’d already been battling with communication in various ways. Masks excluded, until now.
“Then about a month into quarantine I woke up one morning, stood up, and collapsed to the floor. I screeched as I hit. I don’t screech. Maybe a B movie scream queen, but never a screech. I have a disintegrating lower disk and severe osteoarthritis in my hip. Nerve damage. Fun stuff. Migrating from wheelchair to attempt long walks also has been a riot. I’m a sarcastic humanist, go figure. So here I am limited in inconceivable ways, and that damn hole I imagined of Alice looked real comfortable. Corona? Bah! COVID-19? I’m already a zero-to-zip isolationist. I thought I didn’t miss others. I also knew it was not a good place to be. Crazy, not stupid, huh? ‘We’re all mad here!’ says my beloved Mad Hatter, and I knew something had to change. My insurance offered me free counseling, and I was exuberant. Coping skills and treatment planning had me setting goals.
“The Cheshire Cat also says, ‘I’m not crazy, it’s just my reality is different than yours.’ Smart kitty. We’re all different and have different needs. What I love most about our planet is all the cultural differences. Even during the world quarantine, or in spite of it, we’re all battling the same thing. Which gave me an idea. ‘Why sometimes I’ve believed in as many as six different things before breakfast,’ Alice says. See, that’s my girl. I’d always kept a journal, and had written my uncle and aunt in New Mexico when I began to add family and friends, including pen pals as far away as Idaho and Tasmania. And they wrote back. Snail mail rocks! I threw in a surprise in the form of drawings. I began to sketch-pencil, add colors, and I’d even make cards and draw on envelopes.
“So my paradox began with my own world crashing down until I realized that I knew how to crawl out of a dark tunnel and daily reach out to others in a different, yet the same, place. Stepping out of self is the best experience of my life. It’s new adventures from all over the globe, right in my own looking glass.”
“It’s no use going back to yesterday because I was a different person.” — Alice
— Susan M. Plake
