The Frustration of Staying Put
How Living Alone in a Pandemic Made Me Rethink My Life
I have always enjoyed solitude. Now, I should clarify, I have always enjoyed voluntary solitude. This is different. As I approach nine months of sequestering myself away from the world, venturing out for only trips to the grocery store and one desperate journey to the Botanical Gardens this summer, I find I am not the same person who went into this mess.
It isn’t that I have “found myself”, whatever that even means, but rather that the stillness I have found myself in has allowed me to realize what needs to be sloughed off in my life. This has been and continues to be an incredibly painful process. It’s like living in the eye of a storm.
No one on this planet has been exempt from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the rest of the world has managed to buffer the loss of lives to varying degrees, we here in the U.S. have not been so fortunate. The sense that we are expected to fend for ourselves feels like a rude manifestation of bootstrap mentality.
You will be fine. Get it together.
These impersonal urgings to consider this pandemic inevitable and the implications that we should just deal with it underscore the fact that in this equation human beings are not the priority. That one time pity check of $1200 that only some Americans received should have been enough. Martyr yourself for the economy, don’t be selfish. We need to get back out there, we can’t just let the world stop. And we do. When political accountability is a concept this far removed from reality, all we can do is worry about survival.
So, I’ll say it. I don’t care about Wall Street. Frankly, I’m still mad the government bailed out the banks in ’08 and not the American people. I am not the only one who is increasingly fed up with being told that the DOW is an accurate representation of how the American people are doing.
It’s not.
I have been incredibly fortunate to have retained my employment over this trying period, for this semblance of stability I am grateful each day. Yet, I cannot help but reflect on just how fragile the scaffolding of our lives is.
Nothing is fixed, nothing is set. Well established and profitable industries have been upended, and with them hundreds of thousands of jobs. Rent protections expired, leaving those who were unemployed in the weeds and primed for houselessness. What has felt like a fever dream of emotional quicksand and unpredictable horror has too easily dismantled the structures we have long taken for granted. Security was always an illusion.
The lives lost as a direct result of the mishandling of this pandemic cannot be understated. My grandfather is currently in care for the virus more than 1000 miles away. I do not count on being able to see him again. I wanted to send a letter. Talk to him. This hasn’t been possible thus far. I’ve lost a friend. My friends have lost immediate family members. As of this writing, the U.S. has lost 269k lives.
We’ve lost people.
I am thankful my personal list is not longer, as it is for so many. I am acutely aware that this could change at any moment. The sheer crumbling of familiarity, the failure of our government to come through and fulfill their primary duty, the shocking phenomena of conspiracy theorists that deny the existence of this virus to their nurses as they lie on their very deathbed has driven home just how tenuous everything really is.
We have always been busy. Busy trying to pull ourselves up from our bootstraps, creating something meaningful out of nothing. Busy taking care of our families, paying our bills. Busy working and saving and doing what we are told will pay off. But we are just so, so busy.
The novelty of working from home quickly wore off when I realized it meant I would be working more and I would be working harder. I would be pushed harder than ever before and I would feel guilty for not working.
I’m always at home, so I’m always at work.
Now, I have always questioned whether the good ‘ol 9–5 would be enough for me. Could I be fulfilled, like, truly fulfilled in a world where I do that? I thought perhaps I could work and then do what I love in my free time. At the very least, I was expected to put in the effort.
In the pressure cooker that is total isolation I have come to realize that the answer is “no.” No, I can’t. And that is incredibly scary to attempt to reconcile with.
“Am I going to have to choose between labor and happiness? Do I have to settle? Can I survive? I don’t need healthcare, I guess. I just want to be happy.”
Similar nagging inquiries and the personal revelations that often accompany them are refrains I stumble into daily from other millenials. Paying lip service to ourselves with reassurances of, “you are worth being happy”. It does help sometimes.
Dangers of being swept up in an existential crisis are around every corner of our small apartments/offices, we still tempt our dread. We continue to ask ourselves, “If we are this tired and we work this hard, at the end of the day, what is the point?”
The irony of having both gained and lost so much time does not escape me. I think that is just the thing. What we have gained in time (and have gained in workload) we have lost in the ability to do things we once loved. Gone are the days of pecks on the cheek and carefree hugs. At least until further notice.
Free time has generally been reserved for the activities we want to do, we save those precious moments for the good stuff. Dutifully, we’ve saved our vacation days, if we are lucky enough to have them, and try to make the most out of those fleeting breaks from the monotony. As each day passes, the urgency of realizing this is utterly untenable solidifies and becomes heavier in my chest. Cloistered and ready to emerge, to try something new, but the world isn’t going to be safe enough for that quite yet.
Being so alone and having so much time has, if nothing else, provided a good reference with which I can measure what matters in my life. In many ways, I am less patient, and I am totally fine with that. If it doesn’t have purpose, I don’t want it.
Questions that have echoed in my mind since childhood seem more urgent than ever before. “Should I assimilate to survive?” and “am I doing what is right for me?” There aren’t easy answers. These inquiries and the implied need for assurance hidden within them lend me hope. Even in our sorrow and our pain, we ask questions that are rooted in our desire for acceptance and our need to thrive. Even when we are relegated to our homes and starved from human connection, we seek out reasons to trudge on. We want this crazy ride to be worth it, even when we don’t see how that is going to happen.
Like every lifeform, I’m running out of time. Whether it is in 50 years or 5 days, we all run out of time eventually. If I died today I would not be fulfilled. That is a harsh reality, one I have often regarded in the same way I would have had I found I stepped in dog waste.
Notice. Wince. Remove. Move on.
Grappling with the reality that my house is built of straw has been crushing and liberating, I have been forced to confront truths within myself that I could have spent a lifetime ignoring. Things I have always had a sense were true, but couldn’t accept, or wasn’t ready to face.
I’m ready to opt into life.
Now I just need to figure out what to do about it.
