Sixteen days off work, eleven days in isolation, and so far "April 23" is the day my job just might open back up for business. This virus is feeling less and less like your average flu and more like we've just stepped into the beginning of a bad zombie apocalypse movie. Everything in the stories swiped of their shelves and local mom and pops shops shutting down "until further notice." Normality has become shield guards, latex gloves and food stores being pick up and drive through only. It feels weird to drive around and feel like you're in the creepy movie where the houses are all the same and you don't ever see the kids play outside.
It just doesn't feel right. All these commercials about "finding our new normal," having to only video call our friends and family because we can't risk infecting more and raising the numbers of positive results.
There has been only one good, unexpected thing that has risen from this corona epidemic. One I didn't even know I needed until it happened.
And that's that I've somehow in this mess of a country's state fallen more in love with my partner. Maybe eleven days in close quarters is suppose to drive you to insanity, make you wanna rip your hair out, every hour driving you closer and closer to your perfect drawn out plan on "how to get away with murder." Perhaps, our 650 square foot apartment didn't set the tone for a blissful staycation and let's not mistake the new found love for a perfect stay at home either. Believe me, we've fought, cleaned till our fingers were blue, complained about how we've stayed in bed till 2 in the afternoon but didn't do a thing about it, yelled at each other as we took on a DIY project (while neither of us are very.. handy) so we ended up just angrily power drilling screws into thin wood, became wine connoisseurs, ate enough food for a month and slept like bears in hibernation. But let's get back to the love right? I mean if you're still here reading this it's probably what you came here for-- the mushy gushy; or the how the hell did you manage 264 hours in isolation without committing murder; Romeo and Juliet style.
Let me tell you, the answer to that is... I don't know. (sorry to disappoint) Something along the way just clicked. Almost literally like a light switch. I was feeling so incredibly angry that I couldn't do anything, even if I went outside, I was getting frustrated that my job laid me off because they had to close down with zero notice and now I had to scramble to figure out how I was going to pay the bills for the next month to come.
To top it all off... my partner got sick.
Annoyed, stressed, suffocated and probably high on bleach and lysol fumes I was not prepared for an isolation with an undetermined expiration date.
But then it hit me like a bag of hearty potatoes; out of the blue but you're not that upset it happened.
We were driving around trying to find causality in our new way of living and the stress melted into the seats and with the wind traveled right out of the car. I took a long look across to her and all I could feel was satisfaction. I guess the cliche thing to say here would be "nothing else mattered" only now I FELT what this meant. This moment, I could grab the feeling from the air and twirl it around to make cotton candy. It wasn't just a saying, it was a sensation.
My favorite part about this moment though was that through the entire time I was in awe of my beautifully, handsome lady all she was doing was being her best casual self. Bopping, off-tune singing and laughing at her own car show performance of her favorite songs. Completely indulging in the heavy sounds that surrounded our ears, unaware of how the simplicity of her soul created a space of love for me. In this moment , with her, I reached Nirvana.