Helen’s Take on Quarantine
*Disclaimer - I originally wrote this piece while wine drunk my first week in quarantine and had not read it again until today. It’s a cool glimpse into how my mindset has changed these past few months.
So even after typing the word quarantine 300 times in the past 2 weeks I still have no idea how to spell it correctly. Maybe it’s my lack of schooling recently or the hours of watching Tik Toks has finally turned my brain to mush. Probably a mixture of both.
I will be the first to admit I live under a rock about most things. I fell victim most recently to not paying attention to the news about Corona virus the week of my lacrosse team’s Spring Break Colorado trip. I was worried about our games, dying my hair pink in the hotel room, and how many cookies I could con out of the front desk people at the Double Tree in Grand Junction, Colorado. This shifted very quickly when we found out within the next 12 hours that our season was cancelled. I will save everyone the stories about the 20 mental breakdowns I had in my parent’s hotel room, the hotel lobby, and the charter bus. That is a story for a later date.
Fast forward and I am in my first week of quarantine (thank goodness for spell check).
I am standing in my kitchen on a Friday afternoon listening to Maggie Rogers and baking pumpkin spice chocolate chip muffins, sipping on an iced blonde vanilla latte, after sleeping until 10:30 am and working out on the treadmill... is this real life?!?
Okay so I did freak out the night before spiraling into the deep hole that is MY LIFE IS OVER and stayed up until 3:00 am but that still counts as 8 hours of sleep right? My dreams of becoming a hermit and no one being able to say anything about it had come true... self quarantine! I am a self diagnosed, and proven I may add, extroverted introvert. So the first week of staying home was heaven. I slept, ate my yummy healthy foods, worked out, and finally relaxed after a stressful start to the New Year. I began teaching myself that it really would be okay if I didn’t go to bed right at 10:00 pm every night or I didn’t wake up at 8:00 am every morning to workout then do homework. I trusted that I had the ability in myself to get things done by the end of the day. There are moments that I feel trapped or like nothing means anything to me anymore but then I shift my perspective. Being at home with no real stressful deadlines or waking up with hangovers (college amirite) made me feel like a kid again. I literally played outside in the front yard with my sister. My Grandma told me on the phone the other day as I complained about my life, “This is hard but I believe everything happens for a reason”. I mean seriously Grandma you are so right. I am so blessed in this life. It is an easy statement to say but then to see people be hit by this pandemic and have things taken away from them that I sometimes find myself complaining about it is insane.
I mean geez this quarantine really highlights all of your flaws doesn’t it?
When I tell you I had every single day of the rest of my semester planned I am not being dramatic. I knew what I was going to do the Saturday I got home from Spring Break, what I would be doing for my 21st birthday, and Easter Sunday. My calendar was part of me and then Corona came and was like Plans? Nope don’t need them! Schedules? HA, never heard of her! THIS SHATTERED MY WORLD. This time at home with very limited things to do has taught me that not everything has to be written down or planned to work out or happen. I will get my laundry done and clean my room. It has taught me to chill out and accept that I cannot control what will happen to my life in the next few months but what I can control is how I react. Easier said than done but I am working on it. I mean I put “Read in hammock” in my calendar for tomorrow afternoon... baby steps!
How do we continue what we’ve learned or new routines we’ve developed during quarantine into our fast paced stressful “normal” lives?
I have no clue. Anyone got an idea?
But really I think it will be important for everyone to take note of what changed for them during this time. Write it down and work on putting it into your daily life. Maybe we can figure out how to make this quarantine thing work for us.
Also Quaratine makes you do weird things like clean that drawer you never even dare to open or return a package right away instead of waiting 6 months to take it to the Post Office. I also realized I have this strange new habit of actually putting my dirty dishes in the dishwasher? You’re welcome, Mom!
I will end this with 2 quotes I saw the other day that really struck me as helpful during this time:
“It wasn’t for nothing... The time and the sacrifice. It will seem like it was, but it wasn’t. You learned how to pick yourself up, how to push through, you built relationships- ones you would otherwise not have. All those hours weren’t for nothing, they just weren’t for right now”.
“Some people have it worse than you, but that doesn’t mean it’s not ok to feel what you’re feeling.”
Stay kind and healthy!
