Letters | Coronavirus or protests, Hong Kong is home: why this expat will stay masked and carry on

How we respond to the unprecedented situation determines the shape of our experiences and, ultimately, the potential for resiliency and post-traumatic growth. For me, there is no choice but to stay

Coronavirus pandemic: All stories

Letters

Published: 8:00am, 21 Mar 2020

Why you can trust SCMP

Hong Kong has experienced a one-two punch this past year. Between the months of protests and the coronavirus, we are swimming in a painful unease that has crystallised into “the situation”.

I say “we” not only as an American who has lived in Hong Kong this past decade but also as one who calls this city home. Never before have I felt this more intensely, mask and all.

With “the situation”, a mask no longer reflects an individual with a cold; with the protests, masks transformed into a symbol that was later banned; with the virus, masks were transformed again, but this time into a social requirement.

As a therapist at a medical clinic and in private practice, I have experienced this past year an overwhelming uptick in clients experiencing anxiety and depression – couples in which one person fiercely wants to leave and the other to stay, families torn apart by differences in political opinions, friends who are no longer friends, people terrified of going on the bus for fear of catching the virus, clients believing their future here is no more because Hong Kong’s future is no more. We are all grieving (“Coronavirus outbreak testing mental health of Hongkongers”, March 20).

Frantic emails and text messages drown my inbox and mobile phone each morning from near and abroad, paralleling what many of my fellow expatriates and clients think and feel.

Although the content may differ, there is a clear, silent string binding these messages: Why don’t you leave? Leave now. There is no future there.

Many of the conversations that expats are having are punctuated by the same question and commentary. Why stay in a foreign land with foreign problems?

“The situation” is not rosy. But each country, each people has its own struggles, its own “situation”. How we respond to these struggles is what determines the shape of these experiences and, ultimately, the potential for resiliency and post-traumatic growth, the potential we live and breathe in Hong Kong.

And while some are choosing to leave, for me, there is no choice but to stay.

This is one day at a time – each day, a mask-filled march towards resiliency.

Allison Heiliczer, psychotherapist at OT&P and Rethink The Couch

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