The Quarantine Effect

Recently we were all instructed to stay in our homes in order to protect ourselves from the Coronavirus outbreak. A lot of people are pretty upset about this huge change in their routines. They have no idea what to do all day, and even if they work from home there’s this something that feels missing. Honestly such reactions seem both funny and pitiful to me, considering the fact that my routine has been the exact same ever since I started physiotherapy to help me recover from my injury.

However, I cannot say I don’t relate to the confusion people are facing these days, the way they’re feeling trapped and helpless after a point of time when being home seems like there’s nothing much left to do. I have always been someone who has a high need for stimulation all the time and must do something or the other all day in order to feel sane. The first few days after surgery were tough for me that way. All I had to do was to lie in bed and “do whatever I wanted to” which mostly included reading or watching TV and meeting people for a three-hour-window of the visiting hours in the hospital. Eventually visitors lessened, my eyes started hurting with all the reading and TV and I felt blank. What was I supposed to do now? I don’t even remember anymore what I did then, probably just went back to sleep.

Some more days later I went back home and then there really was nothing I would do. No doctors to examine me, no nurses coming to chat with me, no visitors in my room because the stitches in my spine had only recently been opened up and we didn’t want them to be infected, obviously. I had nothing to do except physiotherapy (that was a different method than what I’m currently following). So then I dived right in when my physiotherapist came and I showed so much improvement (only visible to those who observed me daily) that she had to look for new exercises for me almost every fourth day. As a side effect of this enthusiasm I could now comfortably go back to binge-reading and occasionally studying again.

Then some months later I and my family decided to go ahead with the current physiotherapy routine which goes on for literally all day except when I’m eating. This was perfect for me – I was doing something all day long with hardly any time left to do anything else. I realised the importance of time because I only had so many hours in a day left to study after all the exertion. Even today I’m almost struggling to find time to do anything but exercise and study, but I manage and don’t regret any of it. In fact in that time I try to fit at least one of my hobbies per day, and thankfully I have many. Pretty sure that’s one of the reasons why I have never, despite following the exact same routine for these past few years, felt too bored with it.

You ask me how’s quarantine for me? It is a way of life that lets me focus on my recovery and is helping me think of how I can fit all I want to do in that little amount of time I have left during the day because I know once college starts again I won’t have much chance. It is helping me see how far I’ve come from the girl who became restless when confined to her home, where she now feels like that’s her own little world. It means I and mum get to spend all day with papa – his laughter and his jokes and stories feel like therapy. It is letting me help my friends to go through this sudden change in their lives and routines where they run out of things to do and I see myself a little more than three years ago, in need of someone who has gone through this and can help me fight through. And finally, being able to hear the birds chirping in the calm silence all around me, I can see how much this period of quarantine has healed our environment from the harm humankind had brought to it.

(Not so) dear Coronavirus, I may not love you, but I’m grateful for the way you made the environment clean again. Thank you and may we never see you again J