Isolation.
Solitude.
Quarantine.

All of these have been recommended to us in 2020. Some of us have followed those recommendations. Adherence is a spectrum. Adherence has various levels of difficulty. Some live with a lot of people. Some alone. Some can’t isolate. Others refuse.

When this all started, I was unable to isolate. I had to report to my essential job. It was exhausting. The job didn’t change much. I saw less people during the day. We were expected to stay in our offices. However, I experienced something like what I’ve heard quarantine is like for families or roommates. It was exhausting.

Then I got sick. Not with COVID-19 but sick enough I stayed home. One roommate was home at the start but when she left to be with her family, I found myself in a very familiar situation.

A situation where I was completely alone. And there were cats.

Today, I do not want to talk about the pandemic. I don’t want to talk about the state of the US economy, the debate on masks, Black Lives Matter and protests, reopening, or anything epic. What I want to talk about now is something quieter. Something that I was concerned about as the US started to shutdown. Something that grew out of panic for a growing pandemic. Something that isn’t easy to do, isn’t great for your health, and something that is now being discussed in think pieces about stay at home orders. It is something I dove head first into to escape the effects of it on others.

How to live a life when you can’t go somewhere.

Distraction. Vacation. Activities. Adventures. Gatherings. Excursions. Parties. Walkabouts. Meetings. Dates. These are some things that keep us from having to sit in our space with ourselves.

I am speaking from a fairly privileged place. I can’t speak for those without a home to isolate. I can’t speak for those who currently have to isolate in an unsafe or unhealthy environments. I am sitting in a mostly unfurnished large apartment in a city with a personal vehicle and access to groceries and take out. I have running water and electricity. But even with those things, people struggle.

I can discuss later about the psychological effects of isolation. Put someone in a box and see how they fair. I could talk about how to combat boredom. Loneliness. Diatribe about how this day and age for us privileged people makes isolation less isolated with our computers, streaming networks, cell phones. I might talk about those. We do have a lot of time to sit and talk and write.

But what I want to talk about is my feeling of finally knowing others have to experience isolation like I have. Like a child who didn’t interact with kids outside of school. A child who didn’t have siblings at home growing up. An adult who suffers from chronic illnesses and pain. A person who “runs out of spoons.” A person who spent a good part of life alone, not going out into the world.

To say I’m glad we are having to quarantine and live a life that I am intimately familiar with en mass would be a lie. It isn’t something I wish upon people. It isn’t something I’m glad to return to and live in again right when I was breaking free from that lifestyle. But I do think it is important. I think it can be good.

To be alone is to have to work. Human beings live in tribes. It is in our nature. We aren’t built to be truly alone. When isolated, we must put in work to provide support that we need from others. We must entertain and be entertained. We must speak and listen. We must ask and provide. All at once. All to just us, the single person. It is in isolation where we must face ourselves.

That is not easy for us to do.

Some people are able to distract better than others. There are hobbies. There are skills to learn. Projects to complete. Bodies and minds to condition. There are others who shut down. Existentialism. Energy is gained or zapped.

Some people aren’t truly alone. There are neighbors. House mates. Families. Internet groups. Social media. When I was younger, I had some of those things but I was mostly in a house with only my parents and some cats.

I was lonely.

I had hobbies to keep me entertained. I was distracted. It wasn’t until I got older and learned that the lonely I had in childhood wasn’t typical. And that is when lonely hit hard. I didn’t lose anything, really, except for the lack of cats around. I just grew aware that others weren’t as lonely as me.

Chronic pain exacerbated this. It stole my energy. It prevented me from entering the world to “right” my loneliness, if I had tried to do such a thing. It was in adult lonely that I learned how hard isolation can be in life. It was there were I learned how to live and gained tools to possibly thrive down the road.

Cut to: March 2020 when some of us in the US started hearing and speculating about the pandemic. Whispers of quarantine started. Panic of losing luxuries started. And then the ball dropped. And then everyone was faced with what loneliness can look like.

And I found myself, a person who had lived in loneliness, suddenly surrounded by people talking about how they were experiencing the same affliction. For some, experiencing the affliction for the first time. I felt strong in that position.

I knew the feeling. I had routines established to fill that type of life. I wasn’t facing something unknown, or so I thought. What was different this time. I wasn’t alone in being alone and I wasn’t as alone as I was the first time. I had more people I could reach out to both on-line and in person. I was more comfortable in my own skin. I had a few people reach out to me. I didn’t wake up and realize I was alone but rather stepped into it with total understanding. It was scary at first. It felt like losing. It felt like I was being robbed of having an unlonely life.

But then it felt different. It felt good to choose to be alone. It felt good to shun expectations. It felt good to have others hear my difficulties with isolation not with pity but with empathy and sympathy. I felt like I was on common ground for the first time in my journey with loneliness. I’ve been able to hear how others have learned about themselves. How some found freedom and others new appreciation for the pre-pandemic lives. It felt like belonging.

This isolation has given me the chance to forgive myself and my life. It has been peaceful and terrible. It has let me have a chance to reflect with less pity. It has shown me what I value and who to value.

And now I look forward to when we can step out of this. I hope it helps. And then I look at those rushing to run away from the isolation and I think, are they doing so out of desire or fear?

And then I sit with the cats in my apartment, my home cooked meal, and choose to let each person decide that for themselves.

Please remember that this pandemic is something above party lines. It is above racial lines. It is something that we can’t control (but we can bend in good and bad ways). While isolation is difficult and life isn’t the same, your health and the health of every person one, two, three, to infinite degrees from you is important.