![\"biohazard\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/225\/2014\/10\/biohazard.png\")
<\/a>I can\u2019t think of anything to write about because all I can think about is ebola. I know I\u2019m insanely alarmist, and I\u2019m trying really hard not to be. Clearly I am not succeeding. Please don\u2019t fill up my combox with all the science-y reasons about why it\u2019s not going to spread and why I have nothing to worry about, because all my science friends already tried that. It all sounds completely reasonable and I feel immeasurably better until I look at one of my children\u2019s faces and have instant visions of their blue eyes turning red and bleeding. I know it sounds crazy. I am a little crazy, so there\u2019s that, but this is like anxiety to the max. Anxiety on steroids. If my anxiety were a virus, it would be a rapidly replicating and insanely destructive filiovirus right now. See, even when I talk about anxiety, it goes back to ebola.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I need psychological help. But today at lunch duty I actually had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep myself from crying, because I was watching all these beautiful, healthy, happy children sitting shoulder to shoulder, laughing and talking with their mouths open and snatching food from each other and sneezing and coughing, and I thought, God help us all if it spreads here. It\u2019s not difficult to have direct contact with another person\u2019s bodily fluids. It\u2019s difficult not<\/em> to. And for kids, nearly impossible. The genuine terror that I feel for my children is overwhelming.<\/p>\n Please, also, don\u2019t flood the comments with advice to calm down and not panic, because panic creates epidemics, or explain to me that the best way to stem the tide of contagious diseases is to remain calm and act rationally. I know that. I\u2019m trying, actually, to be calm and rational. I\u2019m not pulling my kids out of school or telling my mom not to come visit or constructing an impromptu biohazard shelter out of palm trees and alligator hides. I\u2019m just freaking out internally, and sometimes out loud, but only on the internet or after the kids are in bed. Also, I would love to be calm, but as the Ogre can testify, people telling me to calm down really makes me feel frantic and hysterical. It\u2019s like telling a child who\u2019s stuck in a tree and can\u2019t figure out how to get down to just not be in the tree, already, because it\u2019s dangerous up there and it\u2019s better to be on the ground. I know it\u2019s better on the ground! The ground is where I want to be! The problem is there\u2019s this giant tree that\u2019s suspending me way, way too far above the ground!<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know why I\u2019m even writing this post. I thought I might feel better writing it out loud, but I don\u2019t. I feel exactly as anxious and afraid as I felt before, except now I also feel pathetic and a little embarrassed, since I know this post is probably making everyone roll their eyes. I wouldn\u2019t even publish it, except that I literally cannot think of anything else to write and not writing is making me feel even more pent-up and anxious.<\/p>\n This would be a good time to read the psalms and post something comforting, but instead I\u2019m going to post this. (It\u2019s John Oliver, so there\u2019s bad words, but the ones that aren\u2019t bleeped out are in a British accent so they don\u2019t really count<\/em>.)<\/p>\n