Dispatch From The Middle of Nowhere

Social distancing is perhaps the most isolating thing that I have ever had to experience in my entire life, and I thought I was an introvert for a while. I am happy to report that I am an extrovert that just has social anxiety, so this time period has been extremely frustrating. It has messed with our social lives, our jobs, our education, and for some of us, our looks. It has really ramped up my desire to drastically change my appearance, especially because nobody important will be seeing me for an extended period of time, and I really do not care what people will think of me when I walk into Walmart at odd hours of the night. 

I have the least amount of impulse control out of everyone in my family, and for reference, after five days of social distancing, my sister asked me to cut her hair like the mother in Ponyo after I was already three drinks in and had started a fourth cider. I also let my sister pluck my eyebrows because I was bored, then I had her shave a slit in one side because I thought it would look cool. It does, but only because she actually ended up scraping the hell out of my face and possibly giving me a real scar, so I will be dealing with the consequences of that impulse decision for the foreseeable future. 

Social distancing has me questioning what else I should be doing with my idle time, because I have a disgusting amount of it right now. It has gotten to the point where opening the same four apps everyday (Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok) has become physically nauseating. I can’t even watch TV or movies anymore because I can’t stop thinking about how worried I am for the state of the world or how much I miss my friends. Literally, I’ll just be staring off into the distance or petting my dog, and then all of a sudden it’s “I Miss My Friends O’Clock.” Have you ever been so bored that everything you try to do to alleviate boredom just makes you more bored? It really sucks.

 Of course, I have to check my privilege a lot here. I am in a situation where I have a lot of entertainment options available to me, I have a roof over my head, ample food (if you neglect the fact that my siblings visit the fridge and cupboards at least thirty times per day), I have enough to get by. But, unemployment is hitting me hard, I do feel like I have no purpose without a job to do, even if my job was just to make lattes for various people. My classes should give me a sense of purpose, but because they are online now, it is almost like they do not exist, I never thought I would have to complain about my college courses being too easy, but here I am. The workload has lessened immensely, I only have one class that meets sometimes on Zoom, and the deadlines on all of my assignments seem to be flexible. That doesn’t give me much of an incentive to really have and keep a schedule for working. 

I guess I just feel like I’m in a liminal space right now, really between it all with no idea where I’ll end up or where this is going. But, this all has to end up somewhere. I just hope it is a good place. I don’t really know how to end this, but I’m sending some good vibes everyone’s way. We got this y’all, we might have never seen anything like this before, but I’ll leave you with this: it won’t break us down completely if we don’t let it.