Quarantine is transitioning from a two hour train commute to school each day to a two hour commute from your bed to your desk
It is live-streamed lectures with no captions so you don’t understand anything
It is being expected to still understand even though you can’t hear
Quarantine is an adjustment
It is going from being told you need to get out more to being forced to stay home
It is mental illness kicking your ass because you have run out of reasons to keep going
Quarantine is not getting any help
It is missing therapy for far too long because again, there are no captions
It is dressing up to go to your psychiatrist's office because he is the only person outside of your household that you’ve seen in weeks for more than two minutes
Quarantine is accidentally brushing fingertips with your grubhub driver and even though you know nothing about him, you think about it for days because you miss being touched and also he was kinda cute and hopefully gay
It is your best friend turning 21 and not being able to celebrate so you get wasted together at your seperate homes and video chat
It is a perpetual state of being tired and horny and bored out of you mind even though you have a million things to do
Quarantine is people thinking you suddenly have more than 24 hours in a day so you can definitely take on extra work
It is procrastinating that extra work for as long as you can even though you have nothing better to do
It is eventually doing the work but not having any idea if you did it right
Quarantine is wanting to keep busy, to paint and write, to create,
It is doing none of those things.
Quarantine is writing a suicide note but not actually killing yourself because your family can’t have a funeral
It is wanting to be dead but being afraid of dying, if it happens, it has to be on your terms
Quarantine is not understanding why people can’t just listen but it is also not wanting to listen because half of what you hear is bullshit
It is spending your time on Club Penguin even though you’re 21 because it feels familiar and penguins can’t get COVID-19
It is being so unable to cope with anything that you write a parody of a Plain White T’s song and call it “Hey There, Corona” and that’s the song you end up singing a hundred times per day when you wash your hands to make sure they are clean enough
Quarantine is cleaning your house even though no one is coming over and getting mad about it because it feels so pointless
It is feeling like everything is just so pointless
It is full of unanswered questions and ever evolving information
It is your grandmother being convinced the virus was created by the Chinese government to kill American citizens even though that has been disproven by scientists again and again
Quarantine is detoxing from coffee simply because you hate making it at home
It is missing coffee far too much so you cave and spend too much money getting it delivered but, hey, the world is ending right?
Quarantine is realizing that you really are low-income because the second your grandfather loses his job you feel this sense of impending doom and the never ending question of where you are going to get your next meal
It is spending 20 dollars on a poetry workshop because you simply need to have something in your calendar to look forward to even if it is just two weekend’s
Quarantine is an unwelcome house guest that actually turns out to just be you because you weren’t designed to stay inside this long
It is fearing you will lose touch with reality because you have just been alone with your thoughts
It is fantasizing about events that are a year away since the rest of 2020 is cancelled
Quarantine is seriously considering making an onlyfans account because you need to make money somehow
It is rethinking that thought because you’re pretty sure your dad would find out and that isn’t a conversation you want to have. Ever.
Quarantine is lusting after seasons you may not even be allowed to enjoy
It is not knowing what day of the week it is because your sense of time and space has dissolved
It is not knowing what the hell is next
Quarantine may even be more deadly than the thing we are hiding from.
It is just the beginning.
