Fire Flood Plague by Sophie Cunningham

Author:Sophie Cunningham [Cunningham, Sophie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781761040443
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia

When I was a kid watching horror movies all those years ago, I confused the exhilaration I felt with true fear. But really, it was just a watered-down version of it – as close an approximation to true fear as fruit punch is to absinthe. I always knew the ghosts in the films weren’t real and couldn’t hurt me, just as I knew my parents were in the next room, at hand to reassure and protect me.

The pandemic has shown me that true fear occurs when we feel that someone or something has taken control of our fate. It occurs when we contemplate our nonexistence; when we acknowledge our fragility, our insignificance. We’ve all had experiences like this. A friend goes to work and doesn’t return home. A family member is told a cluster of cells somewhere in their body has gone rogue. In these watershed moments, our little worlds are turned upside down. But usually, the wider world carries on. And while we may find this fact incomprehensible, even offensive, in times of personal tragedy, there is also some comfort – and hope for our own recovery – in seeing everyone else keep going.

What is so exceptional about a global pandemic is that the wider world does not carry on. When we stop, the wider world stops too. And in the chance moments that we meet – at a safe social distance, wearing masks – and catch each other’s gaze, we see nothing but our own fear reflected in a stranger’s eyes. It is then that the illusion we have all worked so hard to maintain for so long – that we are supreme and all-powerful and important – finally falters. The jig is up. We were never in control. And there is nothing quite so terrifying and transformative as that.

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