Coming Out of My Cage
…and I’m feeling kind of nervous about it tbh….
Summer Lovin’, Happened So Fast
Summer has a way of sneaking up on me. Every year I scramble to pull shorts out of storage and reignite the air conditioner. Only when I’m swapping my booties for flips flops do I notice that I’m due for a pedicure.
The overnight change comes with insecurities about how I’ll look in my summer clothes. Do I like these styles any more? Do they even fit? Who was I when I bought all this stuff?
What used to be my favourite pieces get tossed into donation bins, and new trends are thrown into shopping carts. The new season becomes an opportunity to re-invent myself, however slightly.
Summer 2021 also comes with a full lifestyle adjustment.
Mark and I recently got vaccinated. The whole experience was surreal - like the final scene of a zombie infection movie. Science won, and everyone is lining up to contain the threat.
Credits were ready to roll.
The injection pushed out emotions. I should have been relived, but the overwhelming response was anxiety.
Despite what I've seen on social media, the vaccine doesn't erase your memory of the last year. If anything, it cements it.
This has been my year of storage. I sat with my bikinis and sarongs, biding time until could go back out into the world. Sometimes I think that I’ve morphed into some kind of snail creature. My spine has squiggled out of shape, my social skills have atrophied, and my eyes have a hard time focusing in open spaces. I am squishy and vulnerable inside my condo shell.
When we open the world back up I'm half expecting to see a wave of molluscs emerge. I like to think we've all gotten a little softer, and maybe a little more awkward. The optimist in me thinks we'll be relearning together.
My newsfeed tells a different story. From the outside, it looks like everyone is ready to move on. Apparently patio season heals all wounds. A group hangout and some indoor shopping is enough to put this collective trauma aside forever. Pandemic who?
Colour me skeptical.
The weather dictates when it’s time to bust out my shorts. It doesn't control when I’ll feel comfortable wearing them. Similarly, the vaccine signals that it's time to recover, but it doesn't tell me when I'll feel normal.
My Loneliness Is Killing Me
As an extrovert I absorb energy from other people. That’s tough in lockdown. Mark and I have drained each other completely, and we need outsiders to top up our reserves.
That said, social anxiety has made future plans stressful. We’ve been so cooped up that the thought of bringing in new people is overwhelming. Theres a 50/50 chance we’ve learnt our own language during the pandemic that no one will understand.
All things considered, Mark and I have kept up with a solid group of close friends and family. Our phone book may be dusty, but the contacts are there. They can get used to our new quirks
Not everyone has fared as well. The pandemic has also been one of loneliness.
Last April a survey found that over half of Canadians felt isolated during the pandemic. In particular, adults under the age of 35 reported feeling the most alone.
Loneliness can be as detrimental to your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and twice as harmful as obesity. It also increases the risk of dementia and Alzheimers by 40%, and continued isolation expedites their decline.
There are different ways to be alone. Social isolation, for example, is a lack of relationships or interaction with others. Feeling lonely is a desire for more social contact.
We're all familiar with degrees of that feeling - waiting for a date, commuting home from work, not knowing anyone at a party. As the cliché goes, you can feel lonely even in a crowded room.
Emotional isolation is entirely different. Someone becomes emotionally isolated when they are unable or unwilling to open up to others. In lockdown we have limited ways to deepen our relationships. Physical distance often lends itself to emotional distance.
A few new guidelines isn't going to eradicate this detachment. Small gatherings of 10 people outside are only beneficial if you have people to share them with. For those who are isolated, the pandemic is far from being over.
Ironically I’ve felt less emotionally isolated in this pandemic than I have in the past. Pre-COVID I surrounded myself with acquaintances. I never wanted for social interaction, but opening up was a different beast.
Since the party crowds dissipated, I’ve had more room to connect with the friends I've maintained. My social pool shrunk, but the water got deeper. Truthfully I’m not sure that I remember how to wade in the shallow end. What does small talk even look like? Making fast-friends seems like a skill of the past.
Moreover, we’ve learnt to see other people as a threat - proximity means transmission. We’ve rewired our brains to understand limited circles as beneficial.
For me the pandemic loneliness brought peace. It meant rule-following, intentional relationship-building, and quiet. Now I’m nervous about crowding my space.
Hopey - Pokey
The vaccine is the first step in recovery. Having a goal post is motivating, and lots of people are counting the days until they’re reunited with friends and family. So much so that news sources cited a positive mental health spike in recipients of the vaccine.
I guess not everyone is as anxious as I am.
There’s no roadmap for healing. The government can put out as many phases as they’d like, but the mental health journey is completely unchartered. No one has lived through a global event like this before.
One place we can look for guidance is the trajectory of those affected by natural disasters. Dr. David Abramson studied the recovery of Hurricane Katrina survivors over the last 15 years. Objectively Katrina victims never fully got back to where they were in terms of psychical health, mental health, and economic stability.
Subjectively the outlook is more positive. Most believe they have fully recovered, though it took approximately 13 years to feel like they’d bounced back. For those whose lives were uprooted in COVID, the road to recovery is a long one.
In Ontario we’ve been in some kind of lockdown since November, which is more than long enough to establish a sense of routine. Our lives may be somewhat paused, but you still need to fill the time.
Sometimes I forget how bad it really is because I've learnt to cope with my own schedule. I have my laptop, a hundred sweat sets, and a long roster of creative pursuits left to finish. There's more than enough to keep me placated for another 6 months.
Prisoners often feel overwhelmed by choice after their release. More often than not, they fall back into old habits and wind up re-incarcerated. It doesn’t help that they’ve been distanced from any support networks that could offer guidance in their transitions.
We’ve existed in this COVID world long enough to know the ins and outs. Recreation time, visiting hours, lights out - we’ve become accustomed to our confinement. Staying locked up sometimes seems easier than the work of transitioning.
In quarantine I’ve been able to focus on myself without fear of missing out. I’ve had no one pressuring me to drink, spend money, or stay out late. Those expectations are already shifting. Friends are making tentative plans, and it feels like everyone is ready to let loose.
Luckily I have people who will orchestrate a prison break if I try to stay behind bars.
I Want to Break Free
No matter how I feel about it, the seasons are changing. I will acclimatize to new weather in the same way that I adjusted to life from home. Right now I keep reminding myself that better days are on the other side of this discomfort.
When I think about who I was at the start of this pandemic compared to who I am now, I’m not sure that they’d like each other. Honestly, I’m not sure if I like either of them.
The person I want to be exists somewhere in the middle. I don’t want to lose the positive routines and grounding that I’ve found in isolation, but I’m not willing to hide away forever. The key, like for most things, is balance.
Until I'm ready, I will spend my days deciding what pieces stay and which are being donated. Like I said, changing seasons are an opportunity to reinvent yourself - however slightly.
*** If you’re looking for financial guidance after being incarcerated, Stretch is a fintech startup that helps former inmates set up bank accounts - a huge step for someone trying to reintegrate.***
