Bring On The Quarantine (aka, 9 Months of Living Solo In A Pandemic)
March: Quarantine for two weeks? Heck no! Are you kidding me? *existential breakdown*
December: Quarantine till June 2021? No prob, I got HBOMax.
It’s strange to think about mid-March and the inner tantrum I threw at the thought of quarantine for two weeks. At the time, it felt like stepping into a black hole. The black hole being my apartment and, really, my psyche. While I love my apartment it wasn’t a place I inhabited for long periods of time. A few nights a week I might chill with Netflix but on most nights I had, shows, dancing, friends, or just errands. Not to mention, my work provided breakfast and lunch and, if I worked later than 6:00 pm, I could order $25 work of dinner from anywhere within a few miles. (I know!) The luxury of my life, long hours notwithstanding, can not be overstated. My life was sweeeet.
Once relegated to home I had to cook, talk to myself in the morning, work, work out (sometimes) and go to sleep. It’s my home, work place, gym, bar,
Not to brag, but I can now go days without talking to a live human being. I can even go days without talking to anyone, though, I usually text, talk on the phone or zoom. But I don’t have to. In fact, sometimes, after spending the whole day home, I feel like I’m too busy. Nine months ago, this would have made concerned about myself. I found solitary people kind of freakish. Everyone knows that normal people hang. They chill, they talk shit, and relax with other humanoids. But I don’t feel as alone anymore. I felt lonely and then I stopped and then I just felt like a person in the world, alone but connected to everyone. I do sound like a weirdo, I know. I’m ok with that.
Despite living alone for twenty years, I never really spent a lot of time being alone. In the past nine months I learned to take walks, entertain myself, calm myself, and be OK with just being with me. I will say my therapist helped me with this. I have seen friends and even stayed with friends and family in places outside of my apartment, like with my aunt in Tahoe and my friend Sarah in Hawaii. But I often kind of missed my apartment.
It was hard to give up my life, as it has been for most of the world. And I do miss friends, family, dancing and the joys of shopping without anxiety. But this interior, quiet life of aloneness has slowly grown on me. When the after-times are here, I might actually seek out a lonely spiritual retreat for large-ish chunks of time. Not to bash on people, but they are a lot of work. There’s a lot about being alone that has allowed me to maybe get to know and listen to myself and, probably most important, respect myself.
The last nine months I have seen protests, daytime skies blackened with smoke, felt earthquakes, and experienced profound lack of sleep. (I am now on Trazonine to sleep through the night, it kind of works). I no longer think the apocalypse is imminent but our democracy seems not so stable. I have doom scrolled through Facebook posts of people with sick loved ones, sick themselves, Covid positive, and have seen more than one announcement of a death. One guy in salsa named Hector recently passed away. He liked to backup salsa music with the cow bell. I saw him at salsa events for years and now he is gone. I am sad.
If I could make 2020 go away, I would in a heartbeat. But given that I can’t control time and world events, I think 2020 made me a better person. At the very least, I grew up.
