Self-Isolating for a Second Week

My thoughts have been brewing and are now at megaphone level.

How are you feeling?

I was prepared for a two-week lockdown. I have enough food. I have Netflix and books and writing. My friends and my family and I keep in touch via WhatsApp, Facebook or the phone.

I wasn’t prepared for my thoughts gaining significance. Snippets of conversation which would normally not even have arisen or would have been shut down in an instant. These thoughts have got a foothold and they are much louder. So loud it is hard to think of anything else.

My acceptance of self-isolating for all the right reasons is dwindling. It shouldn’t be because I’ve had five years of working from home. What I haven’t ever had is seven days of not allowing myself to go out.

Only getting up from my computer desk to go to the loo or the kitchen or my bedroom. Sometimes I lie on the sofa and doze. I don’t have the energy to exercise.

Today, I’m feeling for the second time, sad and scared. And the thoughts and questions in my head are getting louder and louder. Will the company I haven’t started working for yet pay me sick pay? Will they let me work from home? Is my dad okay? My mum? My son? My friends? Me?

The first was last Friday. I cried for how sad and scared I was for me, my family, my friends, and the world. I’ve also had enough of having a temperature and being so darned tired and sleeping ten hours in every twenty-four and not knowing whether I’ve got a cold or the coronavirus. Maybe I never will.

What’s happening in your head?

This morning, a thought fluttered into my mind while I was standing in the second shower in two weeks — and before you say ew — I’ve been washing my pits and bits daily, and I’m thinking how shiny and light my hair will be instead of weighed down with grease.

Back to that first thought, I latched onto it and amplified it.

Here goes.

A week ago I went for a walk with my friend and neighbour. We hadn’t gone far when he started in on me.

These are our conversations and actions.

Him: would you like to go home and change your jeans for something not so tight?

Me: excuse me? Nobody has ever suggested what I was wearing was too tight. Jeans are supposed to be snug.

Him: you’ll be more comfortable.

Me: no. These jeans are perfectly comfy they have Lycra.

Him: we can go back now, I’ll wait.

Me: How generous, that’s him, always so thoughtful.

Me: no, they’re fine. I wear these jeans every time I go out for a walk.

Silence. TFFT. I was simmering with indignation.

I was incredulous! How can a man — in this day and age — think he’s being thoughtful when he’s criticising what you’re wearing? Maybe I misunderstood his intention.

We continue a little further. We crossed the road, it was empty. It was the day before lockdown in the UK.

Him: it’s okay, quick now, nothing is coming.

Me: do you speak like this with all the people who you walk across the road with? This wasn’t the first time he’d talked me across a road.

Him: aye, I do.

Me: you do know I’m a grown woman and have been seeing myself across roads all my life without a single accident, don’t you?

Silence.

He led the way to a new path, one we hadn’t taken before. In more ways than I imagined it turns out.

He walked close beside me. I stopped and waved him away, (okay I could’ve been politer) to the other side of the road. He harrumphed but went.

Him: why did you do that?

Me: I don’t know where you’ve been and you don’t know where I’ve been.

He doesn’t look convinced but stays on his side of the country road with the ruts for cars to drive down. He is in his rut and I am in mine.

There’s more silence as we head towards the main road.

I’d warned him before we went out that he should do all the talking for the first thirty minutes. This was because I was all pent up with unleashed fear and anger over being in a small room with forty people the day before.

He didn’t have anything to say.

So in my usual passionate, sarcastic, and disbelieving manner of a situation, I took him through what happened the day before. That’s the way I speak, the way I’ve always spoken, and he knows it.

He stayed quiet for a few minutes before he told me to calm down.

Being told to calm down is like telling me I’m wrong to be me. I’m sure I’m not alone in this. Friends don’t make you feel small. I’m stunned. I asked him why. He had nothing better to say than ‘you just do’.

We were both quiet again.

At the main road, he was disappointed the walk wasn’t very long, so I suggested we go to the park for a stroll. He agreed.

I ask him, what would you like to talk about? He says something and this is where I can’t recall what on earth it was but I disagreed with him and tried to explain why. We were walking along a quite busy road, me leading and him following. He shouted out he couldn’t hear me. I stopped talking.

He has nothing to say for a while.

Then he shouts over the traffic: you always go on and on.

That’s because you never understand me or want to understand me and always want me to be something I’m not. The only time we have a good conversation is when the topics are about nature and life in general.

I stalk off at full speed, clenching and unclenching my fists, my nails digging into my palms. I know this is a battle of wills. He has an idea of me, his breath of fresh air. I’m the entertainment. But when I have something serious to talk about, preferably to discuss like two intelligent people, he tells me I go on and on and on.

Great.

Doesn’t a friend butt in and ask questions and come up with counter-arguments? Or listen and then commiserate or buck you up or offer help?

He is not a friend.

At the junction between the park and our road, I make a decision.

Me: I’m going home.

We cross the road, instruction-free this time. That’s an improvement.

He races ahead. Without looking at me he lets rip.

Him: I think I’ve been very accommodating.

Me: excuse me?

Him: I don’t trust you. I haven’t trusted you since Valentine’s Day. You think I’m a fool.

Me: I don’t, but he’s certainly acting like one now. He didn’t hear a word I said about only wanting to be friends.

Him: we should delete and block phone numbers and you can go on with whatever you do.

Me: I will.

Him: of course you will.

He storms off. The weight of a couple of 12 Kg kettlebells falls off my shoulders. I get my phone out, put my glasses on and delete and block him.

He crosses the road and I stay on my side.

The next day, I self-isolated with a cough and a high temperature.

I haven’t seen him or anyone for seven days. I still have a high temperature on day eight. Plus I can’t smell anything and can only taste salt and sweet.

I’ve either heard or imagined several knocks on the door but ignored them.

I know he isn’t infected yet (or maybe he is but isn’t self-isolating) because I hear his squeaky door open time and time again. Perhaps he’s going out for a cigarette.

I’d like to find a new flat. Away from this building, it is as sad and miserable as I am. There’s no point in thinking about that this week or even in the next month or so.

I contacted the call centre company that employed me just before I self-isolated. They’ve had three more people go off sick. They are working on letting people work from home. They will be paying me Statutory Sick Pay for last week and this. So my major concerns I had over not letting people work from home have been put in perspective. Is it fast enough though?

The call from the recruiter has bolstered my outlook. Maybe this and next week will be better.

I’m going to focus on resting and doing nothing other than checking in on my loved ones in a virtual sense. And writing when the amplification blows up in my head! My natural positivity will be coaxed out of hibernation.

This is the latest on what was brewing in my head all last week until this morning when it made its presence felt. Chris Hall, Craig Weldon, Terri DelCampo-Nelson, and Noma Dek thank you for your recent thoughts on the situation.

I can’t wait for the next thought to float in like a butterfly and bellow so loudly I have to act.

What’s going on in your mind? Are you brewing and amplifying any specific thoughts?

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