Where were you when Covid was declared a pandemic?

People often talk about where they were when big events happened. I we could reflex/process together through this question.

Or not 😂 but this is my story:

March 13, 2020, in the TV room of a psychiatric hospital in Massachusetts. They had trump on anouncing the state of emergency.

I'd been there 3 weeks. I was still very manic. Convinced I was telepathically communicating with God...but I was suddenly being released. To a homeless shelter. With no phone. No plan. And no providers. Even tho they got a court order to make me stay for months. I suspect it's because people had already been taken to the ICU.

It was so scary. One of the women came in with an oxygen tank. She was older and not very healthy. She attempted suicide, by smoking. She was drinking too but it sounded like she just chain smoked until she got very sick and taken to the hospital. Her husband died and she was grieving.

She gave me the highest compliment and said that I reminded her of him. I was the only one who saw her and not the oxygen tank. She said he was the only person who looked at her like she was beautiful.

She was the first to disappear to the ICU. Naturally, I thought it was like...a delay death from the suicide attempt. They didn't say she died but she never came back. They also didn't say why she left.

Then I remember us getting our outside time on the balcony and a nurse making a Covid joke. Something to do with the beer, corona. I didn't laugh. One I'm sober and two I didn't find it funny since people had already died. On the news, none I knew of yet.

Then people would be admitted and quickly disappear to the ICU. At least 2 or 3.

I think that's part of why Covid will never not be scary to me. It was terrifying then. now, looking back, I guarantee they would NEVER have released me if the hospital wasn't going to lockdown. I understand why they did, it was a shitty call to have to make.

For me, that was rock bottom at least. Things, overall have much improved in the last 3 years. I have an apartment, full time job, I go to therapy usually twice a week, and see a psychiatrist every 3 weeks.

So, where were you? Either that day or whenever the pandemic began for you.