When Quarantine Feels Strangely Familiar

On stay-at-home life, then vs now

Carly J Hallman

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Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Sometimes, when I’m feeling sad or bored, I like to recall the fool I was back in January. A wide-eyed, optimistic 32-year-old woman, making plans. On Instagram, I enthusiastically double-clicked, heart-ing inspirational meme after inspirational meme: 2020 is the year I’m going to be more social, become a boss, get into the best shape of my life, travel the world!

Take me back, I think. Just for a moment. What I wouldn’t give to be young and dumb and fresh from the clutches of a relatively uneventful 2019. But time only moves forward.

According to all of those memes, 2020 was supposed to be the year of risks. Put on your most Instragrammble bikini, ladies, and step off that cliff, leap into the unknown! As it turns out, the ‘unknown’ wasn’t crystal clear ocean water, as promised in the photos, but a highly contagious virus with unknown long-term effects, a wee bit of financial collapse, and an ever-quickening descent into fascism. Huh.

For so many of us, it has been our duty to stay home during this time. To keep away from others. To withdraw. In a way, this is the easiest ‘heroic’ effort in the world — much simpler than fighting or fleeing a war or rescuing a baby from a burning building or most things, really. But it still feels, from time to time, like the ultimate sacrifice. It’s frustrating. Burdensome. Boring. It feels very much like hitting walls because it is, indeed, hitting walls. These walls encase us, hold us, suffocate us; these walls are all we’ve got. And how lucky we are to have them. To have a home. To stay at home.

And because I have the safety of these walls, I’m not taking any chances. I work remotely, I avoid any unnecessary outings, I wear a mask. My husband and I have resigned ourselves to the fact that this is our life for the rest of the year, at least. No eating in restaurants, no drinking with friends, no trips to the theater, no city breaks or travels abroad or visits to my home country. Here we are, and here we’ll be.

And yet, despite the ‘unprecedented’ nature of this whole scenario, I’ve had moments of deja vu. A tangible sense that I’ve been here before, done this before, once upon a time, in a land far far away, as a teenager living in a…

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Carly J Hallman

Just another 30-something writing about the internet, nostalgia, culture, entertainment, and life. Author, screenwriter, copywriter. www.carlyjhallman.com