ISOLATION, PART IV

My house looks normal.

I eat, sleep, shower, wake-up. (Not in that order, of course.)

Mr. X and I laugh. And fight.

I watch TV and write and chat with my friends.

But nothing is normal. Nor may it ever be again. I feel that if I step outside, I’ll find a world like the one depicted in A Quiet Place. But without the monsters we can see. Because the monster is invisible to the naked eye. It’s the virus.

I wake up every day worried for the whole world. For the people who are sick and the ones who will be. For the people who have lost their jobs and the health workers who are overworked. For the old and the young. And, of course, for Mr. X and me. (We live right in the epicenter of all the current cases, depicted in the image at the top of this page.)

I also worry that this country is being led by an illiterate buffoon who cannot put two sentences together. (Two??? What was I thinking?! He can’t put one sentence together by itself! It’s not amusing at all anymore, especially in a world crisis!) And he thinks of only himself, with his way oversized ego. I’ve honestly never seen anything like him before. (Thank goodness for that, or none of us would be here now!) He’s only making the situation worse. So much worse.

Up until this crisis, I was hardly ever on Facebook. But now, just out of wanting to check on everyone, I am more and more. And to see that some people still support that moron, I mean really support him, is almost as frightening as the virus itself. He’s a virus of a different kind, a much more virulent one. I wonder what his supporters will think of him when they contract the illness. What then?

And people, in general, are losing their minds now. For example, I received an email from a hairdresser the other day, saying that he can send people a hair coloring kit for…$175!!! So that his clients can color their hair for…video chats!!! We’re fighting for our lives, literally, and we should spend that kind of dough for that reason?! How about his client sending that money to people who need to eat right now?! They can wear a hat to talk to their friends on-line, if they really do need to be seen and not just heard. Or just use mascara to cover the grays. Or, since everybody seems to be running out to stores every chance they get, just buy a store brand and color your tresses yourself, if it’s that important to you during this absolute crisis! But mainly, guess what? Nobody cares about anyone’s hair color right now!!! I’m so offended by that entire way of thinking.

Speaking of coloring, this entire coronavirus situation is now even coloring my dreams! For reals. The other night, I was dreaming that I was at a beautiful luncheon at the beach, (at Back on the Beach, to be exact,) when I realized with horror that we weren’t social distancing or wearing masks and gloves! I was panicking, even in my sleep. It took me a few minutes to realize that the scenario wasn’t real.

All of this isolation, quarantine, sequestering, lockdown—whatever you want to call it—will end at some point, even if it takes months. And the world will be a version of normal again, even if it takes a year or two, which I seriously think it will. Nothing will ever be exactly the same.

But please pause a moment and think if you even really want your life to go back to all its “normal” aspects. Use this time to reflect on what you really, truly want for yourself.

Okay, now let me help you all out a bit here, by sharing some things to think of to cheer yourself up during this hardest of times. I hope these statements help:

~ Nothing lasts forever, not even your troubles.

~ This, too, shall pass.

~ An anagram of “depression” is “I pressed on!”

~ Every storm runs out of rain.

~ Buddha is purported to have admonished, “You can’t calm the storm, so stop trying. What you can do is calm yourself. The storm will pass.”

~ Ninety-three-year-old Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, said, “We have a tendency to think in terms of doing and not in terms of being. We think that when we are not doing anything, we are wasting our time. But that is not true. Our time is first of all for us to be. To be what? To be alive, to be peaceful, to be joyful, to be loving. And that is what the world needs most.”

~ The ever-uplifting adorable Dolly Parton said, “When this passes, we’ll be better people.” I pray she is correct!

And lastly, I rarely agree with Piers Morgan’s takes on anything, but this column of his, about the famous idiots, is totally spot-on, so I highly suggest reading it. After all, what else do most of you have to do right now?: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8167509/PIERS-MORGAN-20-Cov-idiots-far.html.