We’re into Week Seven of pandemic life here in Toronto. More than that if you count the weeks of constant hand sanitizing, before schools closed and most workplaces were declared non-essential. I’m counting from when my workplace told us to start working from home full-time, and I started living my best life as a hermit.
Okay, I’m kidding about that last part. The stress is taking its toll. My will-power and short-term memory are shot. Keeping the kitchen stocked with groceries is taking way too many brain cycles. I’m turning inward – I keep needing naps at odd times, I don’t want to talk to people (except my spouse, he’s allowed…), and going outside for walks is too much effort (though to be fair, we’ve had a cold and miserable spring). Yet I have no desire to watch TV, and I’m having trouble concentrating on books (!). And no, I am definitely not spending this time learning new skills or reorganizing my house.
I live with many of these symptoms from depression, but I don’t think I’m depressed now. I think it’s just freakin’ hard to live through a world-altering era of massive uncertainty.
(And that’s even with all the privilege I have: I’m not an essential worker, I haven’t been laid off, my workplace is set up to allow us to work from home (just in the last few years…how timely is that?!), I don’t have kids, my home is big enough that my spouse and I and his parents aren’t constantly getting in each other’s way even though we’re all in the house 90% of the time… Yes, I am thankful. And yes, it’s still hard.)
I’m keeping a journal so I can look back on it later, years and decades from now. Even if I can’t manage write fiction (much), I can try to put into words how this feels. Here’s a little bit from last week:
We went for a walk in the park today and yesterday (…) The park was half-full of people wandering about alone or in small groups (most looked like families, though not all). Dogs off-leash, dogs on-leash, people jogging on the track. I was struck by the feeling of aimlessness. These were not people who were used to going for a stroll in the park. They looked like prisoners let out for their daily hour of exercise.
I have a sense of waiting. Waiting for what? We’re being told that normalcy as we knew it is not going to resume – not for a long time, and in that time many things will change, as the economy is forced to adapt, as businesses “pivot” (buzzword of the year!) or die or are born, as our ways of connecting with each other shift, as art shifts to encompass the new reality. We don’t know yet how different the world will end up looking…or alternatively, how many things should use this as a catalyst for change but won’t.
I have a sense of being suspended in the present. The future is too unknown – when, how long, how gradual, what will resume in what order. Impossible to predict, to grasp.
So that’s me. What does it feel like for you?