Preface
The year 2020 started out as one of the best years of my life. I had a job I didn’t hate, I had a purpose, I had found a great guy, and the great Bill Withers was still alive. In late February, I got engaged and suddenly all eight of the last years of my life Pinteresting wedding decor (whether or not I was in a relationship) could almost be rationalized…almost. How was I to know that the timeless sapphire ring on my finger would open up a wormhole to the underworld, from which a whirling shit storm would come? Enter stage left, good ole’ Miss. Rona!
Like with anything challenging or uncomfortable in my life, I will process my learnings with you all through extreme, unyielding sarcasm and the not-so-occasional expletive. In the following fragmented retelling, names have of course been changed, and a few events have been slightly fictionalized because half of my life since March has basically been a blur. My quarantine experience so far can be summed up into six phases. The descriptions of each phase are a bit of a mess—just like my thoughts. I have witnessed a couple of others go through these phases as well, so obviously, this is straight-up SCIENCE.
Phase 1: Self-improvement and Self Care
Allow me to set the scene…It was Friday the 13th and a full moon. I only wish I was making this shit up…
“Don’t tell the students, but we’re being sent home for two weeks”, whispered my boss to me and my coworkers ever-so-inconspicuously in the hallway. “Homework packets are being printed as we speak—just try to act normal until the end of the day.” Immediately, my brain heard a different message: “Remain calm! Two weeks of paid vacation! We’re all meeting for drinks after school!” It had been a strange couple of days leading up to what I knew could be either the climax or simply the beginning of this highly contagious respiratory event, and those couple of days had been filled with an alarming amount of new rules that just made me sad. No longer could we shake our students’ hands; no longer could we gather together in assembly. You mean, my students can’t hang on me like little spider monkeys anymore? No deal! Though many elementary school teachers won’t admit it, most of us went into teaching for the opportunity to improve literacy, because dammit—literacy is freedom…and also for the free hugs.
It was state testing season, and as always, the pressures on teachers and students were unnecessarily high. Gradually, the seemingly short stretch between February Break (which I worked through because I’m terrible with money) and April Break continued to lengthen as April Break faded like a mirage in the desert. I went to work in the dark and left in the dark, and my undiagnosed Seasonal Affective Disorder was starting to make me snap without warning. This was to be my time to get my shit together again—there is really no other way to say it. I was going to be better for myself and ultimately, better for my students. Besides, this Corona nonsense was going to be under control within a month or so because supposedly we were more or less the best country in the world and all that jazz.
I committed to several goals that I had previously ignored for so long. I was going to reread Nabakov’s Lolita in English AND in Spanish. I was going to take online Spanish classes and become more conversationally fluent—perhaps even start a Spanish fricken book club. I was going to spend lots of time cooking and eating dinners with my fiance (and having tons of dirty sex), making up for lost time that I had spent staying up late lesson planning. I was going to take frequent bubble baths, and those bubble baths were to be accompanied by delicate glasses of wine or the occasional craft beer, classic literature, and the turning of various vinyl records that had for too long been sitting prettily on the shelf. I was going to post more on Instagram about my fabulous life, get back into a Vinyasa Flow form of yoga, and do cardio-based online workouts. I was going to continue taking my sexy heels classes online because quarantine was not going to stop me from continuing to be a badass bitch. At one point in a state that felt almost like mania, I even considered putting up tons of mirrors in the guest room and making it into my private yoga and dance studio. A girl’s gotta work on her twerk. Suffice it to say that the possibilities were endless, and as an extroverted introvert, I valued my alone time and typically wanted more of it. This phase lasted for about 2-3 weeks—you know—before the shit truly hit the fan.
Phase 2: Home-Improvement
EVERYONE and their Mom went through this phase and you can’t deny it. In the middle of a pandemic, the whole fucking world flocked to Lowes to paint their damned houses. I remember standing in line before there were caps on the number of people entering stores and the same week that mask-donning became the caring thing to do. If there was going to be an outbreak in Manchester, NH, this was sure as hell going to be it—the one damn time in three weeks that I had taken the risk to go out! At six feet apart, which was nearly impossible due to the sheer volume of eager customers, I waited in a line of what must have been 12 people to get some paint colors mixed, all the while having neighborly conversations with strangers about what project they were working on to stay sane. I’m not sure I have much more to say about it, except that one-third of the three rooms I’d intended to paint actually wound up painted…sort of…aside from the grueling white trim that I got too bored to finish. But dammit if that isn’t the prettiest damned room in the house…almost. The perfectly decorated coffee stand and Pinterest-worthy herbs potted in old coffee tins would have to wait, for this phase only lasted a couple of weeks.
Phase 3: Debilitating Depression
This phase was the shortest for me, but it was without a doubt the most memorable. Much of it can only be described in vignettes of dialogue and the rest, in melodrama. Perhaps some of you can relate …
Scene 1: A Typical Argument
Fiance: “I’m noticing that the house is a mess and you have so much time at home. I am just starting to feel like I’m doing everything myself.”
Me: “You don’t even know! You still get to go into work AND play disc golf—stupid outdoor activity! I’m working twice as hard remotely and I’m getting headaches because I don’t have those stupid blue glasses, and my students aren’t learning, and I can’t hug my parents and my friends won’t video chat with me and everything sucks! Our wedding is never going to happen either!”
I storm out of the room crying as though I’m experiencing a never-ending bout of PMS or I just watched Mufasa die in the Lion King.
End Scene.
Scene 2: Summer School
Me: “Carlos, we are in class. The expectation is that we wear clothes on our tops and bottoms to school. You need to put your shirt on and find a table. Please move your body out of bed. Carlos? Carlos! …Okay thank you for moving into the kitchen. Please tell your father that he should also have a shirt on…and probably some pants too.”
Also Me: “Michael, please keep your hands to yourself. You need to have a safe body. Okay, now your brother is crying because you poked him in the eye. Juan, are you okay? Michael—I don’t think your mother would want you chewing on her nice curtains…Michael? You just pulled like two feet of curtain out of your mouth. I’m almost too impressed to be upset.”
End Scene.
Pepper in the current socio-political climate, a splash of crippling empathy for those who lost their jobs or their loved ones, overwhelming sympathy for victims of police brutality, and the fact that there was no equity in education either in person or remotely, and I. Just. Couldn’t. Things got slightly better for a while as I began working part-time in emergency childcare. I was supporting our essential workers and helping to provide a safe environment for children. I had some purpose again. Yet, at times it would only make me feel worse not to be able to hold a crying five-year-old when she fell. In this climate, I was policing children’s bodies to keep them safe, and nothing about it felt right. I felt like I was adding to their trauma, and I felt powerless. There was no playbook on fun socially-distanced activities or how to get a toddler to keep her mask on. Really, I don’t care where you land on your views on this virus—there were rules I needed to follow whether I believed in them or not, and I simply could not figure out how to ensure that they were followed in a way that felt less…well…militant.
My heart officially broke one day as a child whined about going outside to play. He pointed to the outside, screaming “Coronavirus!” in genuine, misguided fear. As a teacher, the goal was always to do more good than harm, and I didn’t feel at all that I was accomplishing that goal. It was a failure I’d felt many times before but had thought perhaps I’d never feel again, and it seeped into my veins. It felt cool to the touch…like despair.
Phase 4: Self-destruction
And now, a poem . . .
Grub hub.
Door Dash.
Uber Eats.
Support local.
Hulu.
Netflix.
Prime Video.
I’ve watched it all.
*snaps from the digital cafe*
Things were getting kind of blurry-slurry. I was regularly day-drunk, and so was my inner dialogue. “Life was a world full of bubble baths and rosé…now it’s just rosé…gimme more rosé…all duh rosé…”
I’ll paint the picture for you…to-go containers would abound, as would the Ben and Jerry’s, which I could have DELIVERED. I wore pajama pants and the same Taco Tuesday shirt every other day—that is if I even bothered putting on pants at all. I’d hide to-go containers and take-out bags under the rest of the garbage in the kitchen trash can—my dirty little secrets—I felt like I was somehow cheating on my fiancé and myself as my bank account dwindled and the pounds packed on. Would it be the quarantine 15 or the COVID 19? Lethargy, clogged arteries, and a third go-around of all seasons of Schitt’s Creek. I finally watched Game of Thrones, which started out so great and then ended like a pile of flaming shit. I blame part of my downward spiral on the fact that the last two seasons were basically written by sick elementary-aged children, who still haven’t learned the art of the narrative. But no matter how deep down the rabbit hole this spiral took me, I’d NEVER let it get so bad as to actually finish watching Lost…miserable mindfuck that it was.
Phase 5: Crazy Cat Lady Status
There was one advantage during this crisis. I’m a Scorpio and have been told on numerous occasions that I can be quite manipulative. Before COVID, I had asked my adorable old landlord of two years if I could get a cat. His answer had always been, “I’d rather you not,” no matter how often he told me and my fiancé that we were such good, clean neighbors and tenants. But self-destruction and depression brought forth a no-fucks-given attitude in me, determined to manipulate this shitty situation and spin it into gold. I typed up a truly heart-wrenching plea about not being able to hug my students and being stuck home alone all the time, and my fiancé delivered the letter in an envelope with the rent check. I know my landlord’s a nice guy, but I’d like to think that it was my convincing prose that got us the go-ahead.
Clearly the science continues to ring true since as soon as I started looking to adopt, there were hardly any cats available! Everyone was getting a quarantine pet at the same time. The difference between me and them was that I had ALWAYS wanted one, and those bitches were ruining my chance. I finally found a place in the next state with some cute adult cats. Through email, they asked me what personality traits and general age I was looking for, and they connected me with a tiny gray tuxedo kitty with the wonderful boomer name of Tammy. As soon as I was approved, I raced to the shelter to follow the quarantine adoption protocols and bring Tammy home. (I may or may not have already ordered everything for her before I even knew she existed and before I got approved, like a complete psychopath.) The whole thing took place a little bit like a drug deal, not that I know what making a drug deal is like. I called the shelter upon arrival, signed the contract over the phone, gave them my credit card number, and out came a woman with a box full of screaming cat, which I never got to meet ahead of time. The woman’s only words to me were sarcastic and insincere. “Good luck. She’s gonna talk for sure!”
I made the rookie mistake of opening the box before starting to drive home, and out popped a screaming, purring, little ball of love. But I couldn’t get her back into the box after that, so I embarked on a two and a half hour journey with her sitting on my center console, continuing to scream, pant, and purr all at once. She also flung her body onto the dashboard once or twice. Really, it could have counted as reckless driving, but it ended so beautifully, with this little needy nugget, curled up asleep on my lap by the time we reached the last 20 miles. My fiancé immediately wanted to change her name, but I thought she was just extra enough for the name, Tammy.
“It’s a cat in a box!” sung to the tune of “Dick in a Box”…if you don’t know this little SNL gem, then either you’re irrelevant or I’m old (most likely, the latter). Anyways, I now sing this song to Tammy whenever I catch her being cute, which is all the fricken time. The weeks that followed her arrival consisted of absolutely no sex (obviously, because I was obsessed with spooning with my new cat—totally normal, right?). “Would you like all ten feet of the bed, little Tam Tam?” The selfies, the plans I had to create her own Instagram account, and the parenting arguments threw a temporary wrench in my relationship. I never knew that I was destined to become like the helicopter moms I couldn’t stand.
Phase 6: Home Destruction
Furballs roll by like tumbleweeds
On their path to nowhere
Like me
Clean clothes pile up on the bed
Push them to the floor
To sleep
My office flows across the dining room table
A selfie stick and a Chromebook
Endless paperwork
This poem really sucks some D
A sad attempt at humor
Living out my truth
Phase 7: Finding Balance?
Back to the present. If there is anything I’ve truly learned, it’s that I feel better if I attempt to work on only that which I can control. As I sit my much fatter ass on this sagging couch and watch the news over my morning coffee, my cat harasses me and swats at my computer charger. I am awaiting my first day of working remotely since summer school. It’s time for professional development, and EVERYTHING will be different this school year. I know that I’m in for five hours of nonstop Zoom meetings every day, and I am considering banging my head repeatedly on the coffee table to numb the inevitable pain. I’m making one last Door Dash order (last one, I promise!) because damn, all this sitting and being talked at makes a girl hungry. At this moment, I am hopeful, overwhelmed, and extremely nervous that I may fail myself again. And by the way, I’m still not bothering to put pants on. Quarantine be damned, I will maintain this one aspect of freedom.
Over the coming months, I will brace for the next wave of the virus and the probably next full-on quarantine, which is why I’ve decided that these aforementioned phases may in fact be a part of a cycle that repeats itself. It seems appropriate to compare Rona to a shitty menstrual cycle filled with cramps, cravings, and extreme bouts of unwarranted overreaction. I wonder if we are doomed to repeat it all, or if we will be prepared to be better on the next go around. My new mantra is cautiously optimistic: Put on the pants. Get shredded. Learn something. Love someone. No—I will not repeat the exact same cycle again. I have graduated from my sedentary alcoholism into a functioning alcoholic for social and educational justice!
Perhaps this phase is like the acceptance stage of grief. One of my closest friends has helped me create a budget in an effort to help me act like a grown-ass adult, and last night, I brainstormed with my fiancè about how to officially turn the guest room into my office and classroom. I am not returning to school until December at best and I can’t do anything about that. I can, however, help my students learn how to read because, during my home destruction phase, I took an Orton-Gillingham course in order to better teach all children, including those with dyslexia. Without the joys of quarantine, would I have had the discipline to stay home during the summer and take this course? Honestly, probably not. WTF is self-discipline anyway?
If you enjoyed this piece…good…but the author is anonymous. You won’t be able to find her anywhere…