Thoughts and Second Thoughts on Breaking My Isolation After 3.5 Months

Can I go back in? I’m not feeling lucky today.

I had two choices.

Spend the rest of my life in my apartment, safe from the virus and the reality of the changed world outside my door.

Or, don a mask and trust that my neighbors would do the right thing.

I’ll be eighty-one-years-old in a few days. You’d think I’d have learned by now.

Before masks were required statewide, I’d set July 4th as my release date. I liked the symbolism of Independence Day. Also, it would put me at four months of solitary confinement. A nice round number, but enough already.

At the halfway point, my daughter urged me to go outside for walks. She said jokingly (or perhaps not), “What, are you going for the world’s isolation record?”

Well, I don’t have much else to do, so why not, I said, handing back the snark.

I’ve had a few worrisome moments during my quarantine. One day, i started choking while brushing my teeth. My airway seized, and I couldn’t breathe.

My daughter.insisted I was breathing bad air, and I had to start going outside for some exercise.

“I walk 2.5 miles a day in my living room,” I said.

“Outside, Mom. You’ve forgotten what fresh air is like.”

Easy for her to talk, she has a back yard.

“I know you’re concerned about running into tenants without masks in the elevator. Sneak out at 5:30. You’re the only one awake that early.”

So I approached my front door the next morning with two masks (N95, which is frowned upon and a painter’s mask underneath it. So what if I’m suffocating, everybody’s safe), a hoodie and gloves. I stood at my door in my hazmat getup, staring out the peephole to make sure one of the lunkheads in my building wasn’t roaming the common areas sans mask — my reason for staying cloistered in the first place. You’d think I had a bad case of agoraphobia. I could not turn the doorknob and step across the threshold.

Instead, I stripped down and called my doctor. He assured me the coughing thing was a fluke, not bad air.

Cut to the chase: The Canadian pharmacy that supplies the medication for my asthma/COPD (also a reason for not venturing out) had trouble getting orders delivered on time because of the virus. I had been rationing my doses. After my inhaler arrived and I was back on schedule, I had no trouble brushing my teeth.

Seems the strong, minty fumes of my toothpaste were affecting my already compromised airway and lungs. As if I needed it, more proof of my vulnerability to a virus that attacks the respiratory system.

Then my gums started to bleed, despite a habit of daily brushing and flossing. A phone consult with my dentist revealed that, like COVID toes, bleeding gums is an epidemic. Even in kids, she said. Stress, maybe more sugar in the diet to compensate for quarantining, but probably stress. Collateral damage from the pandemic, she said.

She gave me a remedy — rinsing with saltwater. It worked and I was relieved I didn’t have to go outside to a dentist’s office to cure incipient gingivitis. I stuck to my isolation routine.

But when our governor mandated masks for our state, including all common indoor areas, such as the hallways, laundry room, and lobby of my building, I felt I had my cover. Surely, my good neighbors would comply. I moved up my deadline to like, immediately.

So I suited up, rubber gloves, mask, sanitizer in my back pocket, and hefted two of the many bags of recycling that I was about to declare Found Art if they stayed in the corner of my bedroom any longer. I punched the elevator with my elbow and opened the lobby door with my rubber gloves, all but daring a virus to invade my heavily armored body.

I promptly walked into six feet of chain link fencing.

A development project on our street has opened up a new career path: digging a hole in the same spot, paving it over, and jackhammering it open again, rinsing and repeating until the next pandemic. The chain-link fence that protects their heavy equipment has narrowed our sidewalk to a crawlspace.

I had barely enough room to squeeze myself to the door leading to our trash bins. Out of the corner of my eye, a thirtyish guy walking his dog came toward me. Instead of waiting until I got my key in the door and hustled inside, he walked in the narrow space between me and the fencing. Apparently, he didn’t give a frig that I was obviously an ancient, high-risk neighbor, and he was bare naked. Or at least, that’s what he looked like without a mask.

Are you kidding me? For three and a half months, I’ve taken pains to shield myself from the virus, for my own protection and others, and the first a$$hole I meet comes within six inches of me without a mask.

After emptying my trash that first day, I took the stairs back up to my fourth-floor apartment, as was my habit in the before time. I only used the elevator to transport heavy packages. Exercising like crazy on my living room floor doesn’t hold a candle to walking up four flights of stairs for firing up the old cardio machine. By the second floor, I was ready to call the paramedics. Time to tackle the hills of my city and ramp up my cardio, I thought. So I took my first, actual walk in fresh air the next day.

Wherein I learned my dog walker wasn’t the only jerk la-de-da-ing it around the city. Ballpark figure? Fifty percent of the under fifties I passed on my first slog up and down the hills weren’t wearing masks. They didn’t even have them around their necks to pull up in case they passed someone on the street.

I finished up that walk at about a mile and a half, giving up the fresh air and views of San Francisco Bay for the safety of my apartment. So much for my rush to freedom as I locked my door once more to the outside world.

It’s been a few weeks now since I traveled the streets of San Francisco. During that time, we’ve seen the highest spike since the lockdown began. Am I the only San Franciscan not scratching my head?

I still take my daily trek to the trash room, early before my neighbors are up. A friend used to do this for me, but I need the hike up the stairs. Nothing, though, has lured me farther than the recycling and compost bins.

I’ve posted before that this is not my first pandemic. And yes, during the AIDS crisis, I met many men who whined about wearing a condom. As I held the hands of patients dying of that virus, I had as much sympathy for guys refusing to give up their pleasure for protection as I do for the jerks walking around as though we’re back in the before times.

Zero, with a side of none and get over yourself. You’re not the only people living on this planet.

But the news that I live among selfish jerks is not the aha moment I derived from my first walkabout. SJs will always be among us. Young SJs are the worst. I know, I used to be one. Most of us were.

With so many mixed messages about beating the virus these days, something became very clear to me. We’re all looking for advice about how to go forward. Should we wear a mask or not? Is it safe to fly or drive across the country? Can we socialize again? Is it party time yet?

But those are the wrong questions.

If we’ve learned anything from the sh*t show that is our country right now, you can’t depend on anyone else to save your life.

If we’ve learned anything from the sh*t show that is our country right now, you can’t depend on anyone else to save your life.

Look, we know the risk. We know that this virus kills. I’m not talking about the nut jobs who think it’s a hoax. Like I said, selfish jerks and all that. Or, in this case, SSJs (stupid, selfish jerks — see Andrew Jazprose Hill ). Trying to change those minds is a waste of precious time.

But for the rest of us, you know that once you are dead from a hostile virus, you are very dead. Ask the 700K Americans who’ve died of the AIDs virus.

We also know that, like wearing a condom shuts down the risk of AIDS, wearing a mask and social distancing cuts your risk of getting and shedding COVID-19.

So, if you know those three things, why are you looking to anyone else for advice on how to survive this pandemic? Why are you wondering if it’s okay to let down your guard and move about without a mask?

You already know the answer.

Not liking the answer is not an option to do what you want.

Poor you. Would you rather be dead or dismembered? Think about Nick Cordero.

So, don’t bother me with arguments about personal freedoms and the administration giving confusing messages, and you don’t know what to think. You’re just looking for an out like a toddler who doesn’t want to take a nap.

It doesn’t matter if everyone you know is hanging out on the corner with a beer in one hand and directions to an orgy in the other. So what if the president says the mask is a bad look. So is a casket.

You want to make a name for yourself in this life? Think for yourself.

You’re worried about the economy because you’re not hanging out at your favorite watering hole? Yeah, that’s what they said in the states that opened up too soon. They listened to the politicians too. Now they can worry about the economy while they wait in line for a hospital bed and a ventilator.

You were given a brain at birth. Unless you’ve handed it over to a politician, who only cares about where you put your wallet, use your brain, and act accordingly.

The only question you need to ask yourself about dealing with the virus is: are you feeling lucky, punk?

Were you born under an auspicious star?

Is your Guardian Angel on duty today, or taking a test to see if she is ready to sit at the right hand of God?

Because unless you have some supernatural juice to get you through this pandemic, you know what to do, whether you like it or not.

Wear a mask when you’re outside or in close company of others.

Social distance.

Wash your hands until the planet runs out of soap.

And at the first sign of illness, stay the hell away from people.

I went for my first walk in almost four months. I’ve seen what’s out there. Now, I’m going back inside.

I’m an editor and writer on Medium with Top Writer status. I’m also an editor for the publication, Rogues Gallery. I’ve published 55 titles on Amazon and edit for private clients. If you’d like to hire me as your editor for fiction, non-fiction, or business writing, please contact me here. If you’d like to read more of my work on Medium, click here to sign up for my newsletter. Thank you for reading.