Thoughts about quarantine — One year later

Photo by Aditya Saxena on Unsplash

A year ago, I — and the rest of Spain — was in quarantine for almost two months. I couldn’t leave the house, except to go grocery shopping or to go to the pharmacy. Living with my boyfriend and his overprotective mother at the time (more on that later), I didn’t even leave the house to do that. Going outside to throw out the garbage two or three times, that was my luxury. Thinking about it now, it’s kind of funny how I would carry around the bags of garbage so proudly and purposefully.

“What were some of your highlights during quarantine?” my boyfriend asks me out of the blue.

We are sitting on the balcony after dinner, enjoying the evening breeze after a surprisingly warm day in March.

“That’s a good question,” I say, “especially since every day was the same for two months.”

Unable to come up with an answer right off the bat, I remain silent for a while and feel reassured by the quiet of the evening. Still, I know I have to come up with at least a few things that made being stuck at home worth it. I mean, how else could I have stayed sane when the world around me had gone mad?

“Now that we are able to go outside again and walk around freely, it is crazy to think that we ever got used to not doing so ,” I state, probably more so following my own thought patterns rather than my boyfriends’ initial question.

But really:

How did we get used to that?

Of course, humans are creatures of habit — we are able to adapt to new circumstances, even to the ones we don’t believe are possible. We may go through different stages, maybe even similar to the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance) but in the end we come through on the other side.

With quarantine it was no different.

Honestly, as an introvert, the announced quarantine didn’t even phase me that much (maybe I went to acceptance straight away?) I didn’t mind the idea of spending some time inside (at that time we didn’t know how much time it was going to end up being) because I knew that there were many things to do inside. Here are some examples:

• Do nothing
• Clean out my closet
• Organize my book shelf
• Clean (all the) dust underneath the bed
• Read a book (or many)
• Color coloring books
• Rewatch my favorite series
• Expand my (limited) cooking skills
• Alternatively, eat a lot.
• Sleep in
• Do a puzzle (or many)
• Draw…

Those things might not sound like the most exciting things to do but, once you are not allowed to go anywhere, anything starts to sound exciting in one way or another. Funnily enough, a few days into quarantine I realized:

The best part about not having anything better (or anything else) to do was the fact that, for once, I felt like I didn’t need to feel bad about finally taking time to do those things. Without every day obligations (I had just returned to Spain and had therefore no job yet), places to go or people to meet, I was basically, even if forcefully, reduced to…myself.

I kind of loved it.

Finally, I had time for me: Time to learn new things, time to work on areas in my life that had been neglected or even just time for myself, to think or to just be (being represented by staring out of the window, for example).

Suddenly, my creativity was sparked and I felt motivated.

As the days in quarantine went on, my list of things to do grew. It became easy to fill my days with different activities and, even the repetitive ones started to feel more meaningful and fulfilling than before. While other people started worrying about the extend of which this phase could be prolonged, I on the other hand started worrying about what life would look like once this phase would come to an end:

How would I be able to deal with all of life’s obligations, responsibilities and expectations again?

Feeling so calm now, would I feel stressed, panicky and overwhelmed again?

I tried not to think about it.

Instead, I tried to live in the moment and to not think further ahead than the next day. With this mindset, in the end I was able to do many things that made being quarantined worth it. Here are some of them (which I will also tell my boyfriend about, since he is the one who asked):

1. I found a job. With enough time on my hand, it was surprisingly easy to dedicate the necessary hours a day to find job offers and send out applications. Even though I felt discouraged at times (as companies seemed to have other priorities and often didn’t even bother replying), after a few weeks I got the answer I needed — which lead me to the job I still have to this day. Of course this is a highlight because, once the pandemic hit, the job gave me back some of the stability and future prospect I had lost.
2. I created a Blog aka my own website. I had thought about this for a while but I had never gotten around to do it — I guess I had never wanted it badly enough to find enough time to do it. That being said: What better time than during quarantine, where time had become something less to worry about? Now, my writings have a home; a place to stand out rather than to get burried in the cluttery mess that can be my mind.
3. Quarantine brought my boyfriend and I closer together. Quite literally: Since I had just gotten back to Spain I had no other place to stay than in his house — together with his family. Of course, I was not the number one fan of that idea but there were no other options at that time. Either way, after some time of adaptation (which we had plenty of time to for) we learned to not only co-exist and bear one another but also enjoy the extra time spent together. A year later here we are — my boyfriend and I are living in our own little flat.
4. Last but not least, here are some less deep (but not less meaningful) highlights: Face-timing my parents and friends for the first time ever, celebrating my boyfriend and I’s anniversary in a candle-lit living-room and delivered food, sneaking out to get ice cream for the entire family, running around in circles to get some extra movement, going for a walk an hour a day once we were allowed to, rekindling my love for yoga, watching the clouds through the window, not all day, but every day.

“Not bad,” my boyfriend says and smiles. “But, would you do it again?”

I stare ahead at the darkening sky. Now, the breeze (or his question) make me shiver. Even though I did enjoy quarantine — for the most part — and even though I do consider myself more of a home body, the past year has taught me a lot about other necessities, too.

Like feeling the sun on your skin.

Like touching the leafs of a tree, hearing the splashing of a spring.

Like moving your body freely.

Yes, even random interactions with random people.

Those are all things we took for granted for too long. They were considered “normal” until we realized, by not being able to do them anymore, that they were actually the “better things to do”. Still, now that we are able to do those things again, we want even more, more of the normality we used to know because it seems like it was better that way.

But what does that even mean?

And why can’t what we have now be the “better”?

A year has gone by and things are different indeed. Who knows what the next year will bring, what will be different yet again and what we will consider “better” or more “normal”.

“If I had to, yes” I answer my boyfriend and smile because – hinsight is always 20/20.

“One day at a time.”

What were some of your highlights during quarantine? What have you learned from it and how are you approaching life a year later?

Let me know in the comments down below!