I Hate Talking About the ‘Pandemic Wall’

Every week, it would appear there is a new pandemic wall, and we are all hitting it

This person is simply skating in front of their pandemic wall. Photo: 青 晨/Unsplash

I knew this would happen at some point in the pandemic, but this is the week I finally feel like I’m fully losing my mind. I am going to go ahead and assume you are an ungenerous reader and get my stupid little self-aware disclaimers out of the way now. I am a young, relatively healthy person in my late twenties. I live in a big city, I don’t have a family to support, I have the privilege of working from home, and I don’t have to interface with the general public a whole lot. I have the financial stability so many people lost over the past year, and I know how easy I’ve had things relative to lots of other groups of people, especially now that our federal and state governments are failing us in the face of extreme winter weather. I know for lots of people, being homebound is not novel; it’s just part of their lives.

That said, this past year has still sucked. At least when it was nicer out I could take myself for a long walk or go sit in the park. But now that it has decided to be a normal winter with lots of snow, I rarely leave my apartment except to do chores. The crushing feeling of isolation combined with dreary weather in mid-February is finally making me feel kind of bad.

That’s an understatement, actually. I feel very bad. Every morning, I wake up and spend five to 10 minutes wondering if the reason I feel bad is mental illness or a symptom of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Eventually, I determine it is simply my depression.

On Money, Not Having It, and Writing About People Who Have a Lot of It

I get out of bed, and I do the same exact routine, or else I will lose it. I water my plants, drink my water, refill my humidifier, refill my little Muji diffuser, make tea, and check my emails. One morning a couple of weeks ago, I came home from my boyfriend’s apartment, and in my haste, I forgot to refill my humidifier and had a horrible day until I identified the step I had missed in my morning routine. I do my work. I sit in on my…