My 14 DAY Quarantine. It Was Like I Was Trapped In A Bad Episode Of Black Mirror
I recently returned to Toronto from the UK to spend the sweet, hot months of summer in my Motherland. The most cherished time of the year that all Canadians live for, have valiantly earned, yet still, actively bitch about. It is why we endure the harsh brutal cold of winter, excavating our cars from under a heavy slab of snow like some archeological dig. Running our white numb fingertips under hot water to regain the use of our hands. We more than any other people have earned every minute of every day that the sun is beating down on our pale white, pasty Canadian skins.
So when I had to spend 14 days in quarantine in the height of summer I found it really hard and more like a psychological experiment. Like I was trapped in a bad episode of Black Mirror.
We have all been hiding away in our protective shells for months now and let me tell you it is so much easier to do when the horizontal freezing rain is coming down in March rather than being teased with the scent of freshly mowed grass wafting in from my open window. It is also made easier when we were all locked down together, a pure “misery loves company”, a cheery “we’re all in this together”. You share your photos of your sourdough bread and I will share mine.
But I have to say this really started affecting me. I hated that I for the first time in recent memory I started to suffer from a condition my kids call FOMO, as I tortured myself with Canada Day social media posts (three channels) of dockside photographs that featured cold beer and wine in smiling tanned hands and a happy wet, lake drenched Golden Retriever. Even the frequent deep blasts from my Bliss pen had not been able to rescue me from my despair. I had become, antsy, frustrated, and angry as sunshine for the next 14 days was illegal. I found myself anxious and surprisingly nervous that the RCMP could show up at any moment challenging my rebelliousness with the 25 minutes I lay on a patch of grass in isolation at my condo on DAY 9. In short, I hated what I was becoming without the ability to enjoy my life in the sunshine. I started to understand why it is people who live in isolation are the ones you read about going all postal.
MY QUARANTINE ROUTINE - 14 Days without sushine friends or personal hygiene
ARRIVE: Just deliriously happy to be off the 8 hour, mask-wearing, child screaming, not a single glass of wine plane ride.
WEEK ONE
Rummage through every single family photo my parents had stored away in decades of boxes. Take photos of photos hunched underneath some console table as to try to minimize the glare. Cry a little, mostly at my fashion choices of the 80’s.
Consume a nightly bottle of J Lohr Chardonnay, justifying that I just can’t get a decent California Chard in London.
Fall to my knees in gratitude for my new Dosist weed pen called Bliss, even though I did not quite make it to the blissful state the name implies.
Groceries dropped off, passed through my window by mask wearing friends.
The arrival of a Starbucks latte, also through the window that almost made me weep in gratitude.
Start 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle.
Learned a new TicTok dance (never to be shared).
Officially finished watching every Netflix and Amazon Prime program anyone ever told me I had to watch.
Rewatched reruns of all five seasons of Ally McBeal and wept openly in anticipation of the sad bits while watching The Notebook for the zillionth time.
Had a shower.
WEEK TWO
Rage now mounts and overtakes me.
This might have something to do with the fact I thought now might be the time to stop drinking and get myself on a Keto diet, lose the COVID 10 as I have come to call it.
Appalled at the dreadful programming options my Rogers TV package is offering me.
Outraged that it would cost more to use my Canadian Rogers cell phone than to use my roaming British mobile in Canada.
Beating myself up knowing better than to engage with Rogers.
Found myself plotting the death of the advertising copywriter who wrote, “everyone has to go, so why not enjoy the go”.
Finished 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle, well except for all the blue sky and water pieces.
LAST DAY
I will be out of my imprisonment tomorrow and I am creeping towards the return to a state of “normal-ish”. The first thing I am planning on doing will be to take that much needed second shower, find a bra, throw on pants without a drawstring waist and run with glee and total mask-wearing abandonment towards my hairdresser, arms stretched wide.
Sunlight is almost legal again and I have survived quarantine be it one glass at a time and I can now go back to social distancing on my own terms.
If I took away one thing I have learned about myself, one insight into my dramatic personality I believe it is this, I am just a whole lot nicer to be with when my hair looks good.