If you’re happily co-habitating with your romantic partner(s) under quarantine right now, be thankful.
Because you’re stuck at home, toast tonight — as I will — to the appreciation of the love you have and the awareness of the humans around you and their various circumstances right now. I do not condone getting sloppy-end-up-in-the-gutter-drunk right now, as I think it’ll be non-productive to the world’s cause, but instead I suggest you have one or two of your favorite libations tonight at home, utilize a legal and medically advisable amount of weed if that’s your thing, then join with me to send out these intentions of love and sláinte (the Irish, Scottish and Gaelic word for good health). Here’s your sanitary, solitary Coronavirus at-home Irish blessing for Saint Patrick’s Day 2020, Quarantine Edition:
🍀 Send love today to those couples who are about to find out how their co-dependency has crippled them. One of them has been dying to get out and, now, due to a fucking pandemic, they cannot leave. It’s going to get ugly and we’re all so sorry you’re going through that.
🍀 Send love today to the newlyweds and new couples who have been doing so great so far, but are about to have their first real-ass fight. It might get violent and personal and then there they’ll both be seething mad under the same quarantine roof.
🍀 Send love today to your single and non-monogamous friends who are about to find out how important having sex with multiple people is to their physical and emotional health. Many haven’t had to make choices like this in a long time and they are doing so uncomfortably.
🍀 Send love today to those going through a breakup during this time, especially those trying to do it long-distance, or worse, stuck in the same house.
🍀 Send love today to people who recently (or not so recently) buried the loved one who would have been holding them together during this time. Reach out with kindness or a few funny and reassuring screenshots of memes you saw that they might appreciate.
🍀 Send love, (((so many hugs))), and extensions of online support via text or DM to those who may be quarantined at home with physical, emotional, and/or sexual abusers. If I learned one thing from my ongoing fake Instagram model project, it’s that many of us rely on each other emotionally more than we realize to keep each other sane, if only though a surface-level online connection. Remember the importance of those connections and don’t hesitate to reach out. Call 911if you believe someone is in immediate danger, otherwise, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available 24/7, every day. Call 1–800–799–7233 or 1–800–799–7233 for TTY, or if you’re unable to speak safely, you can log onto thehotline.org or text “LOVEIS” to 22522.
❤️ And I’ll be sending love, greatest appreciation, and admiration to my “Corona-partner” (who shall remain nameless, a thing we should probably all do for the preservation of anything that’s truly good and real). But thank you, anyway, Nameless, for being a source of hilarity, joy, and fried eggs during this weirdness. And thank you for your perfect execution of this joke, which I’m sharing here for couples and friends alike to roar with laughter over as we did.
Please stay safe and happy, everyone! Love one another in the advisable sizes of groups per local and national regulations, be smart, and stay at a safe and clean distance from anyone who may be infected and stay within quarantine regulations even if you believe you are healthy as you may be a carrier. Also, Coronababies are gonna happen, and we’ll love them all just the same, but if you’re quarantined with someone whom you don’t want to have a baby with, this would probably be a great time to hit up Amazon and stock up on condoms.
Love & Sláinte,
❤️🍀
Gabrielle Dion Visca is a Cincinnati, Ohio journalist who writes about ethical non-monogamy and Instagram for Medium and is the founder and publisher of MedicateOH, a non-profit public health journalism project founded in 2019. Please email gabrielle@medicateOH.com to learn about how you can contribute your time, talents, or donate financial support to the project.