Check on Your Single Friends, Part Deux

19 days ago (for those following along at home that is about 3.5 weeks ago) I wrote a blog post about how those who are not single should make sure to reach out and check on their single friends.  At this point, New Mexico has been under a stay at home order (under varying degrees) for 26 days and I have been under a pseudo self-imposed stay at home order for 39 days.  (I got pneumonia at the beginning of March and was asked to stay home until I was better … then the Governor made everyone stay home.)  So again, for those following along at home, I have been “quarantined” for nearly 6 weeks.  5 Weeks and 4 days, to be exact.

Now, I was doing pretty OK for the first 4 weeks.  I managed to keep my shit together, I had a big project going on for work and I coined the term “quaranbaking” to fill my time and keep my mind from going to the “dark and twisty place.”  I held onto to the hope that we would all do our parts and things would go back to normal before long.  (I was being optimistic.)  I held out hope that on April 10 the order would be lifted and I would be back at work and my lift would go back to pseudo-normal on April 13.

Well.  I think we all know what happened next.  The majority of the Governors in the US continued to enact  or lengthened their stay at home periods and COVID-19 started to increase exponentially.  New York started storing bodies in freezer trucks and turned parks into hospitals.  New Orleans has become the Southern epicenter for the disease and even in rural, sparsely populated New Mexico we have seen increases in the number of cases daily.  Our order has been extended to April 30 and shows every sign of continuing to be extended beyond that.

Proms, graduations, sports, hair and nail appointments, non-essential surgery and any number of other things … life as we know it has been, essentially, cancelled.  I am beyond grateful that I work for an essential company and my company has invested in the equipment necessary for the majority of the office employees to work from home.  I would be terrified if I was one of the thousands of people sitting on hold with the unemployment office, I am not sure how I would handle that level of terror.  I have spoken to friends who are in that situation and they are beyond terrified about being able to pay bills until their respective workplaces reopen.  Now, I am not so arrogant as to think that I am the only one that is very firmly in the dark and twisty place, but this is my blog so it does get to be about me on some level.

I am going to use my self as the example for the majority of what comes next, but I assure you … I am not the only person you know feeling this way.  I would venture to guess that you could scroll through your phone or your chosen social media platform, identify the people who live alone, and assume that, on some level, they are experiencing the same feelings I am.

I am in the dark and twisty place.  And, quite frankly, I am in deep.  I think most people know I routinely suffer from depression on a variety of levels and that I have had, in the past, taken medication for it.  Due to a number of circumstances, that is not an option for me right now.  I am attempting to manage it in a few different ways, supplements, making sure I get enough (OK, as much as I can) sleep, exercising 5-6 times and week and doing my Goddamned best to keep a motherfucking smile on my face.  I get up every morning, make my coffee, feed the beagles, work, use my lunch break to get a workout or a run in, work, make dinner, clean, wash dishes, bake something, knit something …. anything after work to keep my mind and my hands busy.  And, for the first few weeks, it worked.  I manged to spread joy and love all across the city of Albuquerque.  I quaranbaked my ASS off.

But it started to get harder.  The half marathon I had been training for for the last 6 months was cancelled.  I missed spending my mom’s 70th birthday with her and when I met my brother halfway to drop off her favorite meal for him to give to her for me, we couldn’t hug.  (6 foot rule applies to people you do not live with and his girlfriend is a nurse so she makes sure we follow the guidelines!)  I had to cancel my bucket list 40th birthday trip that I had been planning and saving for for over a year.  Now, I realize I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, the only person dealing with major disappointments right now …. but tell me.  When you cancelled your bucket list trip, did you have someone sitting on the couch next to you to cry on?  Did you have someone to hold you?  Someone to commiserate with you?  OR WAS IT JUST YOU AND YOUR DOGS (/cat/komodo dragon)?  Because let me tell you, there is no more lonely feeling in the world than watching something you desperately wanted leave … and not having anyone to turn to and commiserate with and to give you a fucking hug.  Oh, and the other side of that coin?  Not having that person simply underlines the fact that You Are Alone.   It highlights the string of failed relationships and the number of men who have screwed you over and broken your heart over the years.  So there’s that to deal with on top of everything else.  (Also for those following along at home, I have decided to swear off on-line dating for a while.  If you know of someone you think would be a good match for a screwed up, dark and twisty gal, please feel free to set us up.  I make amazing chocolate chip cookies.)

So I present to you this — I can name, off the top of my head, 5 women I know and love who are dealing with LITERALLY everything I just wrote about above.  They are having solo crying jags that come out of nowhere and they are feeling isolated and uncared for.  They see what all their friends are dealing with and don’t want to reach out to them for fear of feeling like they are whining … or worse, a burden.  They are depending on social media for their social interactions because … well, the phone isn’t ringing and the texts from friends are few and far between.  But, despite our desperation for human contact and our desire to feel that someone out there cares for us …WE WILL NOT REACH OUT.  I repeat.  WE WILL NOT REACH OUT.  The very things people tell us they admire in us … our strength, our ability to be alone, our ability to be self-sufficient … those are the very things that prevent us from being able to reach out for help.  We do not want to seem weak and we sure as hell do not want to be a burden.  So we don’t.  We stay at home.  We post on Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/whatever other social media platform too much and we post too many pictures of our pets and what we have cooked/baked/knitted/crocheted.  We get excited about the grocery store because we have Actual Human Interaction, and we get to-go from our favorite restaurants more than we should because, again, Actual Human Interaction.  We watch for people to come get things out of our quaranbaking basket so we can wave at them out the window.  We make birthday treats for pretty much everyone we know has a “quaranbirthday” (including our friends’ kids or, frankly, pretty much anyone) because we want to see people, spread a little joy, and hopefully make someone feel better …. because making someone feel better makes us feel, however slightly and however temporarily, needed and wanted.

So, please. Check on your single friends.  I assure you, the longer this goes on, the less OK we are.  And we were not all that OK when this began.