Embracing the Suck
Finding things to love about life in a pandemic
A few nights ago I was feeling particularly down about, you know, this whole global pandemic, national social distancing, economic collapse thing. I lamented to my partner that this felt oddly like grief, like the way it feels to mourn a loved one. It feels like I’ve not only lost all the things I most loved about my life but like I’m also losing time.
I kept thinking about this period as weeks and months of my life I’ll never get back. I celebrated a birthday a few weeks in, and it made me really consider that the older I get, the more poignant that feeling will become. That time means something to me in a way that it didn’t when I was younger.
It’s been four weeks since this started impacting us directly. Four weeks of working from home, of barely leaving our apartment, of strange looks from our cats who seem perplexed as to why the humans are around so much lately. Four weeks and I still felt like I was grieving. Humans are so incredibly adaptable, but I felt like this was getting harder, not easier.
I’ll be honest: we are very lucky.
First, we are healthy. We haven’t had any symptoms (though we both wonder about serious a respiratory infection I had in January that we had thought was bronchitis). And while even young, healthy…
