The first Covid just year wrapped up, a year of discontent, disorientation and dismay. Nothing good really happened except for lovers who tied the knot impervious to anything except their feelings for each other and babies that nothing would keep from popping out after nine months no matter how hostile the world.
The rest of us just muddled though as best as we could.
The overlaying theme has been solitude like we have never experienced before; one not of our choosing, one that keeps foe and friends alike away. This for me is the hardest part. I find myself talking to loved ones faraway, breaking down in mid -sentence and making a fool of myself; wishing desperately to see them -and I don’t mean Zoom, an app for which I have developed a visceral dislike: too frozen, too scripted, not me. I never know who is listening or when it is my turn to speak. I also have to wear makeup and something decent at least from the waist up.
Not for me.
For the first time in my adult life I cannot seem to get out of my pj’s.
Actually that is not true.
Every day –not too early in the morning- I take off the bottom part and put fresh knickers and a sweat pant which is very reassuring because it looks just like my pajamas, only slightly less creased. The T-shirt I keep on. That one I change every two days.
Aside from that I do try to shower every day even late before bed. My grey roots are now 2 inches long and ask me if I care. I don’t give a damn; they can stay like that until I gain enough momentum to drag myself to the town’s hairdresser.
Silver lining: I have not worn a bra in a year and have lost 9 pounds.
Doesn’t help that I had a heart attack a few weeks back, it kinda took the wind –what was left of it- from my sails.
I will not, repeat will not, mention the state of my working hands because a sense of vanity holds me back.
Strange how a year ago we all started on a high, I guess we had been living too long with the immediacy of getting somewhere, catching that flight, getting things done right now. Adrenaline constantly pumping. We welcome the new pace, the slow-as-molasses-days with no traffic and no fighting for a parking space. The world came grinding almost to a halt.
We were housebound. No more school, no more making the 7 o'clock communte for yet another stressed-out day at the office, no more being late for mettings -late and unprepared- and facing the creepy guy who kept looking at my sweater with lecherous toughts on his mind and smile to match.
The skies cleared and the oceans were blue once again. We were going to come out healthier, wiser and kinder; everybody a Greta Thunberg wannabe.
Very soon young Greta became obsolete, a dinosaur of pre-Covid times. Sickness and fear and then death took front stage.
As more and more people died, not only of Covid, we felt the circle closing in on us. Was there the same amount of deaths before? Or were we just too preocupied living our hectic lives to notice? In the last year we have lost friends and family, gone for good.
But we have also missed going to the theatre and morning coffees with our best buddies. Little by little all the unfulfilled dates, the things absent from our lives took their toll; it became close to impossible to get excited over a new recipe, bake yet another cake.
I let my garden go unattended for the first time and became Netflix obssesed. Papers I just skimmed over and discarded on the floor -all this while lying on my couch- they were too full of bad news.
A life in Tecnicolor had suddenly turned into a bad black and white B movie, un film noir.
Solitude ruled.
Last week’s picture of the Queen, sitting like a tiny black sparrow all by herself said it best. The virus is not the only killer; it’s the sense of loss which now pervades our lives.
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