Stockholm Syndrome

As the year of 2021 rounds out I find myself reflecting on what the last year has been like, what’s happened, how I’ve personally changed. Our second year in the pandemic, as things have begun to reopen I think back to when our cities were completely shut down, establishments empty, curfews enforced. 8 months ago when my roommate contracted covid I wasn’t even allowed out of my apartment to run errands, and now I’m booking concert tickets in stadiums at full capacity. I wrote this piece when my total isolation was coming to a close, excited for nothing more than going for a walk around my block. The other day my friend told me he’s just booked a trip to Mexico in March and pleaded with me to join him. I can’t help but think about when my kitchen was the greatest trek of my day, clinging to the steadiness of routine in a world so shook up. With the arrival of the Omicron variant I can’t help but fear being sent straight back. As I tentatively pad back in to a world, not quite like the old one, regaining past rhythms, I think back to when it was just me, held tight by nobody but my seclusion, forced to find comfort in just that.

I think I’ve fallen in love with my captor. Where I used to thrash against their pull and scream for my release, I now nestle myself in their hold and coo as they stroke my hair in to a deep rest. Though I know they used to make me cry and the only thing keeping me going was the hope that someday soon they would mercifully release me, I now can barely remember just what I was so desperately trying to get back to. I’ve come to know them and realized they’re not so bad, what’s bad is what’s out there. They offer me predictability and comfort, I can no longer understand how I ever lived a life of irregularity. Now I wake up and we spend the day together, it’s quiet, but nice. At night I fall asleep in their arms and in the morning they’re there, waiting to do it all over again.

Isolation due to covid has been part of my life for over a year. It has been the largest global equalizer I’ve known in my lifetime. Whereas before I was allured by such things as fame, wealth and a myriad of experiences I sought to have, Covid took all of those possibilities away, or at least put them on the back burner, and shifted my most pressing desires towards the health and safety of myself and those I loved. It didn’t matter who you were or what privileges you had, nobody was insusceptible to the virus. In a morbid way I found this quite liberating. Having spent so much time comparing my life and self to others, covid was a universal pause button; a reminder to slow down and focus that energy inwards.

Of course this mentality didn’t come immediately and as I write this a part of me still thinks it’s a pile of bullshit. When covid initially hit my city and isolation was mandated, I was going through a breakup. In fact I think our last fight was about how to handle the situation of the virus, which at that point we couldn’t imagine going past a couple of weeks. A relationship ending in normal times is hard, and a relationship ending when you’re not allowed to see anyone is brutal. In ways now I see that timing as a blessing. I wonder if isolation hadn’t been imposed if the break of codependency would have been as clean. That’s not to say I didn’t falter, which I certainly did, with daily calls at first which I was also initiating to most of the contacts in my phone, grasping for human connection that then felt so distant.

Living solo I had one house of friends that I bubbled with who I saw weekly. In between visits I had lots of time to spend with myself with a goal of rerouting my patterns of dependency. I fell in to my own routines. Consumed the content I wanted to consume without compromise. I was figuring out who I was when nobody was there to watch.

Almost two weeks ago my roommate tested positive for covid. Again I was hit with the horror of the situation, the stress that I may contract it too, the guilt that I may have already passed the virus on, the weight of it all, except this time I couldn’t even take a walk around the block to take my mind off of it.

As I write this I have three days left in my self isolation. The time went by quickly as I had been told by friends who had gone through this same ordeal it would. I adapted, found new routines, found new ways to carry out my old ones. I had been reached out to by people I hadn’t spoken to in a year, had loved ones checking in on me more often or making themselves more readily available. It wasn’t that bad.

My roommate who had been exposed is all recovered and now allowed outside. I’ve been living vicariously through him as he runs out to the grocery store to pick up olive oil, small privileges I had once again taken for granted. He’s getting his first vaccine this weekend. With the looming of this joyous event plus his sudden “freedom”, I can see both him and my other roommate, who’s already been vaccinated, start to pull more and more towards “normal days”. You know, the days we’ve all been anticipating for over a year, the date when everything will go back to how it was.

I don’t know if I want to go back. I mean, of course I do, but part of me is scared. I’m scared of how reckless some have been as restrictions ease, or promise to be in the near future. Coming off of the heels of this pain in the ass quarantine, that we got through pretty scratch free in the grand scheme, I know that I never want to go through this again. With my reintroduction to the outside world approaching I’m scared of the possibility of being reinfected. Logistics and public health aside though...I’m also scared about how I will be in the new-old-world.

Now when I think of when everything goes back to “normal”, instead of imagining how hard I’m going to dance, how many people I’m going to kiss, I think about how I’ll probably get tired around 9pm. How once I get home I’ll need to watch an episode of Breaking Bad to unwind. Probably need to rub one out to the image of Aaron Paul too. I’ve become so used to my solitude I fear I’ll have to relearn the joys of multitude.

I worry about the reinstatement of pressure we were so blissfully released from when someone asks what we’ve been up to lately, because our answers had all been the same. Nothing. And that was okay, expected even. Though I know this past year has not been an easy one, and I also recognize the difficulties I personally faced unrelated to the pandemic, I have guilt about not using my time more wisely. I worry that the great switch of expectations will be flicked and suddenly everyone will be waiting for the presentation of some tremendous dissertation from me or else I’ll fall to the wayside.

I worry that maybe I don’t have that much to return to. Maybe all the friends I couldn’t wait to see again in fact don’t exist, were merely a vivid fever dream. I worry that all the parties and events I had been anticipating are actually invitation only and I’m not on the guest list. I worry that the me that’s been just scraping by this whole time won’t meet expectations when somebody is finally there to watch.

And so I curl up in the same bed I’ve curled up in each night, embraced by my isolation, coddled by my aloneness, and wait for tomorrow to come. I’m scared but I guess I now know I’ll adapt.