COVID-19 and Me
Wherein I examine how my life has changed during the ongoing pandemic.
It’s been fourteen months since COVID-19 turned my life – and everyone’s – upside down. It was mid-March 2020 when we went into lockdown, and everything about day-to-day life changed. I think I felt the change more than most; for more than six months, I had gotten used to having as much as nine or ten hours of solitude a day while my family was at work and school.
Sure, I went to a weekly writing meetup, and my regular Tuesday afternoon therapy session. I went grocery shopping, and sometimes sat and read while eating lunch at a local eatery or drinking lunch at a local bar. Once in awhile I took in a movie on opening day. But I’ve been self-employed for more than fifteen years; I don’t have co-workers and I don’t fraternize with my clients. Beyond that, with the exception of my wife none of my regular romantic and/or sexual partners are local, nor do I have friends who I see in person more than once or twice a year. Prior to the pandemic, my wife and daughter usually left for school by seven and were home by five o’clock. I knew social isolation very well.
Suddenly virtually everything shut down. Movie theaters, coffee shops, restaurants and other businesses were shuttered, and despite the assurance that this societal cessation would be over in a matter of a couple weeks, there was uncertainty as to the short- and long-term consequences of this hiatus. While grocery stores remained open, they had reduced hours, long lines even just to enter, and new protocols intended to mitigate the spread of the virus. Suddenly we were wearing masks, spacing out more than six feet as we shopped, scrubbing our produce with hydrogen peroxide, and trading our children’s college funds for toilet paper.
Teachers taught and students attended school virtually, through webcams and on computer screens. In the space of a day I went from having more solitude than I wanted or knew what to do with – which usually involved tending to my business, doing laundry and general household chores, writing, grocery shopping, dinner prep, masturbating, and if I was feeling particularly self-indulgent, a couple hours spent watching television or playing Xbox – to being able to expect none of the solitude and solo decompression I needed for my own mental health, while somehow simultaneously experiencing even more social isolation than I could stand.
It turns out that I’m much more of an extrovert than I thought. Being a stay-at-home parent for almost a decade put that side of me to sleep and, aided and abetted by rising social anxiety, brought my introversion to the forefront. While my tweets suggest that introversion is my dominant quality, I wasn’t always this way.
Throughout my life I have thrived on in-person social interaction, while still requiring alone time to recharge. But suddenly being unable to hang out with friends and hug loved ones who don’t live with me was painful. Knowing it could be a long time until I could see these people and in fact some of these people might not be alive when it was once again safe to see them – over time that became nearly unbearable. I didn’t know when I could once again warm a barstool while enjoying a craft beer. I didn’t know when I’d have a spur-of-the-moment trip to the public library. I didn’t know if these places would still exist when things returned to normal.
COVID-19 wasn’t the only source of darkness in 2020. The U.S. was not only suffering through the most corrupt presidential administration, but dealing with an increasing portion of the population so completely duped by right-wing con artistry that they gleefully embraced (and continued to embrace) their own subjugation. We saw no abatement of police violence against people of color in this country, and despite widespread public demand of systemic change during summer 2020 I do not feel optimistic.
At the same time, I was coping with my own (largely self-imposed) feelings of guilt, shame, and failure and the associated strain it put on my marriage. I had largely cut out carbs and sugar. None of these things made life wonderful under the best of circumstances, but throw a pandemic into the mix and stronger people than I are sure to feel unhealthy levels of stress. We were living in a dystopia. We arguably still are.
As I said before, I was used to some measure of isolation. My social circle, to the extent that I’ve ever actually had one, has always been pretty small. Pre-COVID, the typical day saw my in-person social interaction beyond immediate family limited to waitstaff and cashiers. For years I was used to conducting most of my social activity online or otherwise in a virtual capacity while spending much of my time alone. But no longer having the option of attending a friend’s birthday party or eating a meal at a restaurant sucked, and as the months passed it really affected me. It has been a long, lonely, anxiety-filled year.
My pandemic experience has been marked by a lack of intimacy. There is a woeful dearth of physical intimacy in my life, but I’m feeling the lack of emotional intimacy as well. My relationships have slowed down, dried up, and generally died off. Some of the people who have been my partners have lost interest. The single people have gotten into other relationships, while the polyamorous people have gotten into monogamous relationships. Some have succumbed to feelings of depression and withdrawn. Some have just disappeared. Whereas the majority of the last decade there was someone I could talk to, flirt with, to get off with, and maybe even to look forward to seeing in person, there is none of that. Essentially, there is virtually nothing to look forward to.
That’s understandable, though. Life is bound to change, moreso during a plague. Things get put on hold – or end – for a number of possible reasons. But now it’s May 2021 and I’m completely vaccinated. And while I understand it’s not necessarily feasible or advisable to get on a plane for a few hours and then hole up in a hotel room with someone you know well (much less a casual acquaintance or relative stranger), thoughts of doing exactly that, and the hope that I’d be able to do so again once COVID-19 was no longer as big a threat to public health as it was in the beginning, kept me going to some extent. But even when it is once again safe, my options are limited.
To be continued.