I’ve got to be honest with you: working from home in absolute isolation is really taking its toll on me in unexpected ways. On my social media accounts, I’ve joked that graduate school—in particular the MFA degree— really prepared me to live in lockdown because we only had classes one day a week— the rest of our time was supposed to be devoted to writing. And for me, it basically was. So, I’ve spent large swaths of my life sitting in front of a white screen and blinking cursor, watching the words pour out of me (or just watching the white when they don’t.)
This, though, is different. In that other version of life, I frequented other places where I could be alone in public— you know the scene: writing on my laptop in a sunny cafe or the corner of a local bookstore, writing in my journal at the far and shadowy corner of a bar. Alone, yes, but surrounded by the murmurs of other lives that I could look up and imagine myself into, if only for a second before diving back into my writing again.
This feels different. This is the “100% All-About-Me-Show” where I’m the star, director, producer and comic relief, and quickly things are starting not to be so funny anymore. Don’t get me wrong: the animals are loving this, and I’m saving lots of money on car maintenance and gas. Aside from Rich and the animals, the only people I see are my colleagues in the marketing department at the college where I work. I’ve reached out to other friends, but quite possibly because I’m both weird and awful, no one’s (yet) taken up my offer for a ten-minute chat over coffee or tea.
And I thought I was OK with that kind of solitude. I mean, when I was 21, I moved to a remote cabin in the Sierra Nevada range with no TV, phone or internet so that I could work on my first novel. The novel was awful, but I finished it, loving that existence that included basically no one but me (although the night I drank so much rum and coke that I hallucinated that my feet were swelling like doctor’s gloves when you blow air into them is not something I ever want to repeat.)
And yet, even then I remember a neighbor invited me to a house party at a house down the street, and I went into that strange mosaic of rooms lit with lightly tinted warm with moths flickering over our heads and the atmosphere smelling like cannabis (illegal, then) only to discover the guy I’d sort of been seeing was making out with a girl who I’d never seen before.
I walked the miles back alone to my cabin and screamed as loud as I could into the black and empty darkness— I screamed long and hard until I didn’t have a voice left, and that’s what I thought solitude was for.
But this is not that blackness of the forest long ago. This is something else.
My breakdown
On a Monday when we were ordered home I had a complete breakdown. I’d been up late the night before, revising an essay for a writer’s conference for the millionth time because I really want to go (even though it probably won’t happen anyway.) It was an essay that, even though I could recite it by heart, gutted me, and I went to bed feeling empty of guts and all possible feeling.
I woke the next morning and (unknowingly) put a tablespoon of ghost pepper hot sauce (the joke stuff I got for Rich months before) and ate just that, not the eggs (I’m terrified I’m getting fat) and whatever was left in my gutless self evaporated in the fire that consumed not just my mouth, but the whole inside of me. Charred black remains joined the morning meeting and when asked how I was holding up, I broke down on Zoom in front of not only my department but our entire division.
I don’t have to tell you it was bad.
Helplessness has started to take over my days: why should I share my words, my stories? Who cares about me? (Answer: quite possibly, no one.) I loved writing enough to go into debt for it, and now I look at the work I produce— what I put into the world—and it doesn’t seem to mean anything.
What is the value of storytelling when we are living lives that are remarkably quiet, remarkably the same? What does it mean for those of us who face not only the threat to our health but losing our place of business, our livelihood, and our homes? I already wrote about my car being broken into, my things being stolen. I refuse to grocery shop anymore; the last time I went for a few supplies, I was stopped by a man in a mask who told me he would take me out into the street and shoot me himself so I wouldn’t spread the disease. I have no idea why he said this, or how he meant me to take it. The mask obscured his facial expressions. His voice had been flat.
The world is filled with unspeakable violence— and that’s something I’ve never been interested in being a part of. The thing is: I could go back home and scream, but I live in a neighborhood now and people would hear me. It would chill them to hear that kind of desperate scream. And, in all reality, it would fill them with a rare kind of guilt that there’s not a damn thing they could do about it. (Perhaps I am projecting. I feel that kind of guilt, and that’s what keeps me quiet.)
Searching for Normalcy
I still get up early to ride the bike indoors with Rich. I still go running outside, alone. I still do OTF workouts at home (even though my dog, Freya, thinks these are invitations to play.) I walk Freya around the neighborhood twice a day, since she’s been tasked with defending me (I want her to have some variety in her day.)
I weed.
I garden.
I do the laundry.
I am taking an online class.
I’m reading Rebecca Solnit’s memoir Recollections of My Nonexistence.
I’m trying to learn how to knit, but I really suck at it.
I’m still working, although I find it extraordinarily difficult to focus when my phone buzzes me with another alert about the increasing death toll in this country, and how everyone’s hands seem to be tied. in a weird way, I feel as though we’re being forced to watch years of inept leadership as it trickles through our public sectors and we all have to admit no one has a clue as to how to respond.
So, in the midst of all this, what do we (do you—do I) do?
I cling to the verbs.
I ride my bike.
I run.
I write.
I breathe.
I write lines with a safe six-foot gap between them so none of them become infected.
If you’re feeling lonely, you can get involved. You can support organizations like the Arthritis Foundation, which is important now more than ever given the recent data that is being released about COVID-19 and its impact on those who have pre-existing conditions.
You can keep yourself healthy and not have a total breakdown in front of your coworkers. (Don’t do it— it’s embarrassing.) You can read blogs like this one or listen to podcasts. You can believe that some part of the world we once knew will return. And, it probably will. But you will also have to accept that everything after this will have changed.
Or, if you hear a lonely, jagged and desperate cry— it’s just me finding my voice in this new and strange world.