How does one find the next step when there’s so many options of what you want to do? When the only time you believe in is now, the future so uncertain in its coming?
It is the Year of Great Isolation, an Invisible Disease that launched a worldwide game of Russian roulette every time you went outside of your home or let someone in your home. A year when the term “positive” was anything but, and “negative” was a relief and made you an optimist for a brief moment.
You consider seeing a friend, a human, someone. A non-pixelated face. You gamble: to upkeep your fragile mental health, or risk your physical health? Do you put your immune system to the test, or your mental one? Meanwhile, life pulses on. People meet, fall in love, get married without ceremony. No one wants to be alone at the end of the world.
This year was a Test of Intimacy. A pop quiz for the intimately unprepared. Do you have people you’re close enough with that you’re one of their Five Chosen Pandemic Friends? Mask or no mask interactions? Unclear standings in friendships were cleared. Everyone’s cards revealed. Saw who has more chips to play at the table. Who has reckless hands. Everyone is forced to play and no one wins, just loss after loss. We saw the pandemonium that happens when the world folds inward, going online instead. Trying to cheat the system — it’s easier to be intimate behind a screen, this anonymous mask. We got used to this shoddy, Microsoft XP-version of conversation. This watered down drink, sugared up and sold by the gallon. Forgot that inconvenience and discomfort are a small down payment to pay for realness, for true connection. Everyone screaming or scrolling, with nothing to say. We mistake noise for company, afraid to be alone.
We’re all drowning in a sea of plastic bags. Nauseated ourselves with endless Zoom calls, afraid to be alone. Considered rekindling dead tinder. Set fire to anything that would burn, even for a moment. For warmth. For temporary light. Complained and blamed, so we could feel united about something. Tiptoed around hope, like it’s a grenade that might end us. Not realizing that that’s the point — we need this to end. This self-preservation of nothing good. Nothing real. Just fields of pessimism, with nothing to eat. Everything we’ve become needs to end, and the only way is to clear the table and let it rebirth. The wild phoenix of hope. Is there no other kind? Maybe then we’d believe in a future. Belief in a future is faith we’ve forgotten to protect and keep alive. All we believe is that there’s no greater curse than to be alone. But is alone a feeling after all?
The phoenix dies alone, rises alone.
Is it lucky, to survive? Am I the lucky one, to survive? This year, this disease. A disease that led many to die alone.
