Sometimes It Feels Like Groundhog Day
Life behind these four walls as a pandemic rages outside
In March this year, I vacated my apartment and went back to live with my family in the countryside because of an impending announcement about a coronavirus lockdown — the first of many in our country. Six months later, I’m still here, and while every year of my life has had its own character, these past months stand out as surreal.
Sometimes it feels like Groundhog Day — each day following a monotonous routine of me getting up from bed, making my way to my laptop eventually, and later on crawling back to sleep.
In between, it’s extremely formulaic: answering emails, my grandparents eating lunch at 12 sharp like clockwork, some hostile exchanges between my mom and grandparents, messages sent to my friends and boyfriend.
Of course, there are small variances every time, but each day has become somewhat predictable — or at least I know that I’ll be spending most of it within the confines of the four walls of our house. And when I do go out, for a routine medical visit or weekend groceries, the landscape is also the same: very few people milling around save for the crowded lines at the grocery store, restaurants half-occupied, police standing by at checkpoints so you could lower the window and let them aim a thermometer at your head.
When I first heard about the coronavirus, it seemed remote, distant — pictures of Wuhan on the papers, interview snippets of residents who were forced to stay indoors, harrowing reports of what patients were going through. Still, life went on where I was as always, so I didn’t think it would reach this far. After all, before this, I’d never heard of a pandemic spreading so badly as to affect countries all over the world, and neither had my grandparents — only in history books or science fiction.
But then it happened. Lockdown after lockdown. Me saying goodbye to the apartment where I lived alone, thinking that I’d be back in a few months — but it’s already more than halfway through the year, and I’m not sure when I’ll find myself there again. Everyone putting on face masks and face shields, offices shutting down. Congested hospitals being featured on the TV, except this time it was closer to home. Jobs lost, tenants moving out because they couldn’t afford to rent anymore, so many people scrambling for a way to survive in a move that favored only those who could work digitally.
I’m facing the same wall I’ve faced these past six months. It all feels like a blur, looking back — as if the pace of life has been diluted down to a trickle — but I’m not even sure at what point we are on the journey. Perhaps still a long way to go.
Most of the time, it feels okay. Sure, there’s the background anxiety about the apartment I left behind even though I’m still paying rent for it and my reduced freelancing work, and the stress of staying with my chaotic family, but it’s manageable. I can switch it off temporarily, breathe, keep my focus on whatever I’m supposed to be doing, laugh on the phone.
But occasionally a crack happens. A sense of emptiness overwhelms me, and I don’t have answers for it. I wonder if I’m making progress, if I’m behind — silly things to think about, given the situation. I imagine what could have been if the pandemic hadn’t happened. I look at the future and draw a blank because nobody has really made predictions that stand the test of time.
And momentarily, the bubble around myself shatters and my mind flits to other people, what they could possibly be going through — because as much as the pandemic is a collective human experience, we’re all at different points. In any given city, someone can be:
- actually thriving and rediscovering themselves
- adjusting well enough
- struggling to keep a business afloat
- feeling deeply lonely because they haven’t seen anyone properly in so long
- closing their eyes because their mental health is falling apart
- stuck in a home where abuse is only getting worse
- blearily blinking their eyes at a hospital after they’ve been told they’ve gotten the virus
- emptying their wallets and wondering where they can get money for the next few days
- or a million other scenarios.
What seems to be common is the strain on mental health as the pandemic goes on.
I’ve found myself just curling up on the sofa, wanting to pep talk myself into feeling better but not having any authentically comforting words to say — because I know that tomorrow will likely be similar, and the next day. Maybe it’s also the excess screen time, the isolation, the lack of sunlight. An overall mood of grayness because spontaneity seems to have been bled out — only the sunrise following the sunset, as always. Maybe it’s the perhaps-illusion that there are less things to look forward to.
And I see it in other people too, firsthand. Couples I know have been arguing more. The shouting matches at our house have been escalating. My grandparents — who were children in World War II and who have never seen a pandemic of this scale before — seem to be getting more sluggish the less they can go out. A friend has been telling me that she feels very alone, and another said that she’s getting tired of dealing with messages from everyone, which seem to be teetering on polite but empty.
It’s hard, really. The hysteria has lessened, and you’d think we’d have shifted gears smoothly by now so that it genuinely becomes a “new normal,” as it keeps getting called, but it’s still a sudden break, even devastating for some.
And then after a while, the crack passes for me, but I know it’ll be back again. I don’t have any answers. All I can do is continue on. Every era has its unique defining moments, both good and bad, and someday there will be more books about this, more essays, but perhaps from the safe vantage point of the future, when a vaccine might have already contained the virus. I write this from the present, fresher than memory, as the virus still rages on.
