It’s just me and a bottle of Spanish Rioja, some acoustic jams and my headphones tonight because I just can’t engage right now. (There’s a chance there was a small solo dance party.)
We’re on day nine of being self-isolated. And, as much as I love my family, I am self-isolating from the self-isolation for everyone’s safety. It’s all so overwhelming. I’ve left the house for small spurts of time to walk the dogs (my daily mental decompression to keep me from snapping), once to run to the grocery store and another to the pharmacy. But man, tonight it feels like the walls are closing in on me.
I have no reason to complain – my family and I are still healthy, there is food in the cupboards (though according to my children we have no food), plenty of toilet paper, and I have a warm place to lay my head. For months I have felt like my calendar has been full of things I didn’t want to do and now it’s empty with blank days for the foreseeable future. I kept assuming I didn’t have time for me to finish all the tasks that I’ve wanted to tackle – from daily workouts to cleaning out the basement – but those tasks don’t seem as urgent as they were just ten days ago (even though the size of my ass is beginning to think otherwise).
I’m not sure we should view this time in our lives as a challenge, but more as an outward-bound experience. The majority of us are not pushing ourselves to our physical limits (unlike the medical personnel trying to save all of our asses – thank you very much), but rather pushing our limitations outside of our internal comfort zones. We are so caught up in our daily lives that we have forgotten about the things that really matter. It’s a chance we’ve been given to slow down and spend time with the ones we love, a chance to get back to basics and allow ourselves to do the right thing. Yes, we’ve got to change the way we think and act… and sometimes that isn’t easy, but it’s not just about us anymore. (Although, I must say, I do feel much better knowing the world is prepared for any cleanup effort involving toilet paper.)
So, here’s my theory… I will do my best to help my fellow humans overcome this crazy moment in time (and I seriously hope you #staythefuckhome too), but it’s amazing how quickly I went from zero to losing my shit. And, this really annoys me. Is this Mother Nature’s way of teaching us all a lesson? Is she sitting back sipping on a glass of rosé waiting for us to get it? Is she anticipating us to reprioritize the things that are necessities in our lives? Does she want us to just be for a while? I have no idea, but that crazy bitch seems to be on a war path, so maybe we should just all simmer down a bit, keep our distance, bake some cookies and stay home for a little while. She’s like a mom who’s really fucking tired of cleaning up other people’s messes (believe me, I know exactly how she feels right now), so we need to heed her warnings before she really loses her shit. (Will you share your TP with her?)