And Just Like That
We’re right back where we started.
Coming out of quarantine like….
Allow Me to Reintroduce Myself
It’s been a while, but not much has changed. Another week writing to you from lockdown. At this point, it almost feels nostalgic.
Or maybe more like a reoccurring nightmare.
To get through the pandemic, I’ve found myself turning to old favourites. Last Christmas, I showed Mark Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This year he got a crash course in Sex and the City.
The timing was intentional. The second our tears dried from the finale, we were a button push away from the reboot. And just like that, we flashed forward twenty years to a world where Miranda can’t say anything right, Charlotte can’t move her face, and Samantha is a looming shadow.
The contrast was, in a word, jarring. That said, it’s a familiar feeling. Every time I catch up with a friend, I find out about another life milestone that I missed. Someone’s first house, a new job, a secret wedding, children, retirement…We’ve been in lockdown for almost two years, and life is passing us by. It feels like we’re frozen in capsules, waiting to be thawed in the future.
Ontario has taken the Austin Powers approach to survival: time travel.
When we’re finally free, who will we even find on the other side? While we’ve been kept from each other, we’ve all aged. The experience is universal, and yet happening in silos. And, depressingly, at a faster rate than we would like. Sedentary lifestyles, stress, and too much time to think have bridged us into the next phase of our bodies.
It’s like Oprah is yelling through our windows. “You get cracking knees! You get menopause! You get eye strain!”
The person clambering out of my quarantine apartment is not the same one who went in. In some ways, that’s a great thing. The time I’ve spent in self-reflection has been revolutionary. That said, it came at the cost of my neck mobility, eyesight, and social skills.
What’s my age again?
Watching friends go down completely different life paths
I Couldn’t Help But Wonder…
The passage of time is something I’ve been struggling to reconcile. In some ways, I feel like the person I was pre-COVID is a lifetime away. In other moments I feel stuck in one place.
I’ve had friends fall on either side of the spectrum: women who’ve jumped full force into Peter Pan syndrome, others who’ve jumped into the suburbs. It’s next to impossible to keep pace when everyone is maturing in isolation.
The pandemic is adding an extra element to a life stage that’s already fraught with division. In your twenties and thirties, people choose whether or not to settle down. Kids come into the fold. Sex and the City prepared us for the evolving nature of these friendships. Girls we once partied with host baby showers no one wants to go to, move to Brooklyn, or fall out of windows...
In normal times, we’d be along for the ride. We’d see the milestones happen gradually, say farewell, and choose the course that makes the most sense for us. Now we’re watching these major life decisions happen from the discomfort of home. There aren’t sendoffs anymore.
From my own locked tower, I can’t see how everyone else is feeling about ageing. To get a fuller picture, I took a page out of Carrie’s word document and turned to my friends. Here’s how you responded:
The majority felt loss for the years we’ve missed.
I feel like I’m wasting the prime time of my life.
I definitely feel like I was robbed of some of my key fun years of life.
I had a big HOLY SHIT moment during the pandemic, realizing that I have less than 20 years until retirement. This whole thing is just forcibly stealing time.
We’re missing everyone’s milestone events like weddings, travel, university, etc..
A couple were, understandably, thinking about death.
I’m certainly more aware of my mortality!
I’m scared of ageing less. COVID showed that you can die at any age.
Some found the pandemic changed their course, for better or worse:
I’ve had to reprioritize my life after missing out on a key part of my 20s.
Covid sped up our relationship timelines. Within a few months of dating, we were quarantining in my parent’s house.
This makes me reconsider having kids in the next couple of years.
I never realized how important it was to have time apart and to have your own space.
I’m supposed to be making mistakes, going out, travelling. I’m settled down now.
Others are denying that we’ve aged at all:
How could we have aged…it’s still March 2020.
BOTOX
Personally, I feel the same way as most of you. My mid-twenties have been spent behind this computer screen, writing to you about the world’s atrocities.
I mean it’s been fun, but not what I expected this time of my life to be.
I don’t miss who I was before the pandemic, but I wonder where I would be had lockdown not forced my hand. How domestic would I be if I had had another few years to coast, party, and not think about the future?
I like to think COVID accelerated what was bound to happen. It definitely created high stake environments for relationships to crumble or flourish. Marriages fell apart quicker than they would have before. My friend above bought a house with the girl who quarantined with his parents.
The question becomes, are we missing anything in shortening the journey? Will there be a mass mid-life crisis in twenty more years?
On the other side of the fence are those who’ve elected to see this time as a pause. Maybe they’re right to consider these years a write-off, but I wonder how anyone will be able to pick up where they left off.
Botox is probably a good place to start.
Me having an identity crises in lockdown
Big and (S)Carrie
The terrifying truth is that I, along with most of my peer group, are coping better than most.
The kids are most definitely not alright. In fact, there has been a 51% spike in attempted suicides among 12 to 17-year-old-girls during the pandemic.
The children in my family have quickly become pre-teens, stressing about what to wear, what to say, and when they’re going back to school. The last time I was home for Christmas in 2019, they started a pretend band and forced us to sit through a performance.
This year they asked me about my job.
While the last two years have felt like an eternity for me, I can’t imagine going through it as a child. Going from 8-10 was challenging enough without the weight of the pandemic, online learning, and long-distance friendships. I could barely make friends as it was.
Older generations aren’t faring much better. We saw what happened in retirement homes, and the stress of COVID isn’t helping anyone age gracefully. This is doubly true for a demographic that already struggles with loneliness.
My grandmother has had a stark decline since March 2020. Her memory is going, her depression is rampant, and she barely tries to take care of herself. Two years ago, she took me shopping for Christmas. This year, it felt like a stranger was living in her house. Sometimes I look at her and think that I never got to say goodbye. Other times there’s a glimmer of who I remember, and it’s even sadder to see it vanish the next time we talk.
And just like that, I’m beginning to grieve someone who is still alive.
In the reboot of Sex and the City, the writers are quick to point out that these aren’t the same women we left in 2004. A lot can happen in eighteen (or two) years. We shouldn’t have expected the characters to stay stagnant, and we shouldn’t expect the post-COVID world to be the same one we left.
It doesn’t make it any easier to grapple with.
People talk about frogs in boiling water. When the heat comes gradually, frogs (allegedly) don’t jump out of the pot. Instead, they slowly burn to death, blissfully unaware of the change in their surroundings.
COVID, by contrast, threw us into the pot and closed the lid. By the time the burner turns off, we will have melted into something new. Hopefully, something that retained the best parts of our former selves. If we’re lucky, something that still fuses well with the people we held closest.
To quote the original Sex & The City finale:
[T]he most exciting, challenging, and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you can find someone to love the you you love, well, that's just fabulous.
After all, ageing is really a synonym for living. If we can all get through COVID doing that, I’d say we’re in good shape.
Or at least better shape than Big…..
