Distanced

This pandemic has changed so so much.

I don’t have much in common with anyone anymore it feels like. I’ve been distancing myself from close friends and not sure why.

Haven’t wanted to write.

I desperately need some outdoor time. But it’s too fucking hot and I can’t take it.

It’s death outside right now in Austin. 87 degrees when I get up at 4am to work. 107 when I head home, even hotter later when it’s after 5pm. The air hums and vibrates with the energy of the heat, it’s as if I can feel the sun penetrating my skin, the energy I carry with me, my very soul sears and bakes and it’s excruciating.

No one understands that seasonal affective disorder hits me hard this time of year because I’m separated from that which I love the most.

And so combine all of that with this pandemic and this half-in half-out existence everyone I pass each day seems to have…it’s a surreal feeling.

People know they should be isolating at home and wearing masks but they don’t do it. They act as if life is normal and yet they have these shadows of guilt following them everywhere they go.

It feels almost wrong to enjoy the new job and the people I meet, because everyone is awkward and distant behind the masks they wear. It’s as if not seeing a person’s entire face dehumanizes them somehow. Both of them. All of them.

Maybe it’s a grand conspiracy to make us all habitually avoid one another and eventually we will see each other as nothing more than a desk, a tree, a rock. Dehumanizing leads to atrocities, we’ve seen this. Or more likely, because I don’t believe any of what I just said, perhaps we are just experiencing fatigue from it all.

Six months and our world has flipped. Hell, four years and it has. Not pointing fingers, but speak to me in person and I’ll definitely give an earful. We aren’t the same.

We are exhausted from every person being a danger.

We are exhausted from being afraid to hug our family when they come home from work because they could have been exposed to the virus.

Exhausted from never making eye contact and never ever physical contact, we must stay six feet away at all times, nope don’t Ever. Touch. Each other.

And my natural inclination to avoid people is growing, or perhaps this year has allowed me to relax into it, instead of attending events every month or so. Now it’ll be three years before I return to the circles I used to know and well, do I really even know them anymore? They definitely don’t know me.

I’m tired of not being able to write. Tired of having my phone or iPad as the only way I talk to people. I’m tired of the news, social media, I’m tired of it all.

If I could, I’d move into my car and drive to the woods at least eight hours away to the nearest mountains and leave everything in my car that needed a battery or gadget that had circuits and I’d walk until I couldn’t walk any more.

I need a detox from this pandemic, and there’s no end in sight.