The Abnormal

ON "HOUSE ARREST" That rabid mentality of going after the unknown 

THERE'S NO USE FAKING IT, this quarantine period had made some anomalous changes in my itinerary. Although I’ve never been an outdoor person, I prefer to stay indoors rather than suffer myself under the heat of the sun, but this is a different kind of indoor sport, one that could alter your mind in a way that would make you feel off, something that would give you fits if you’re not aware of. Yes, like you’re going nuts.

We don’t know yet when will this virus be contained. There’s no vaccine yet available. Some say it would take a couple of years before everything goes back to normal since the “new normal” is still very much at odds with the old one. Most of us are still hanging on for dear life with our old ways as if it’s a birthright that you don’t necessarily trade-in. We’re not ready to relinquish the old dispensation yet, the new one is still uncertain if not dangerous if you consider the ongoing casualties.

I was doing fine during the first few weeks of this lockdown. I figured this is more or less my usual routine of lazing around the house, waking up early, drinking that morning coffee, and sometimes questioning the arrangements of the furniture inside. That has always been the norm every time I’m holed up in the house for an extended period. Everything seemed so smooth, so cool even to be able to work at home, despite the retrenchments going on with other companies following the spread of the virus. The pandemic, I thought, seemed to compliment my sedentary habits, not to mention the idea of spending a lot of time with the family, since I stayed with my widowed mom when it all started, along with my sister and her family.

But a month after the lockdown I started to feel restless. I didn’t know what was going on other than having this rabid mentality of going after the unknown. Then a sense of despondency comes in. This is where the rabbit comes out of the hat. The magic realism of the early days of the quarantine had given itself up to a more sinister, fiendish outlook. It had gone gothic.

When death is just outside your house, you begin to see a dark horizon out there. If I was skeptical about the effects of this lockdown initially on one’s mentality, I began to embrace that as soon as I felt the monotony of having to do the same chores over and over again, regardless if it’s a weekend. I don’t want to be dead, dealing with the same stuff over an extended period. But the rut did hit me and I was a runaway train for quite some time. Talk about facing the Devil and that deep blue sea underneath that horizon.

The result of which was my frantic mirroring on social media. I’m not a fan of doing selfies, but I had lots of it during the lockdown. Perhaps I saw something in it that would eventually ease out the tension I’m dealing with since I got hit with the blues a month after. The lockdown brought a halt on my itinerary that I couldn’t contain myself, and as a sort of reaction I kept taking selfies just to remind myself how helpless I was. In some respects, it was a call for help.

Not that I was having trouble adjusting to this new routine, but that I still have some unfinished businesses to deal with and that the virus is killing all that. I was not overly concerned with the result of this lockdown, I don’t even care at all if it imposes a new system or a new lifestyle to go through just so life could move on, what bothers me then was the deliberate neglect I had to go through the entire quarantine phase, which might lead to a breaking point in the end.

So, the mirroring had its feet on the gas pedal. There’s no stopping to it at one point, regardless if I look vain or stupid in front of my friends. That has never happened before. I may have to cringe with some amusement taking a look at those pictures again, but if I consider the state I’m in at that time, and even until now, the uncertainty of not knowing anything at all outside of this virus, including the personal ones, I wouldn’t want to deal with it again.

I had to let it out. Otherwise, it would cause some unnecessary stress on me, making my days all the more difficult. Life was never the same again after only two months of staying away from everything. My admiration for those couples being away from each other who survived during this lockdown. I can only imagine what they have gone through, and still retain the old flame despite the intrusion of this “new normal”.    

Like many of us, I was in “house arrest”. I’m in a locked state because someone in China was so careless of having a meal out of a wild creature. And out of that reckless abandon I had to go through a phase that could endanger what I had labored for years to keep. When your lovely routine is disrupted with a careless whisper, that could turn your world upside down. In my case, I was reduced to a social media post.  

What happened a few weeks back still has its residual effects, despite my numerous attempts of making it normal at times. But the quarantine phase is still changing a lot of the old order as we know it, that everything seemed so virtual these days, detached and seemed out of reach. Those selfies tell a lot about what’s going on behind the scenes, and there’s nothing normal to it. On the contrary, that was quite abnormal, to say the least.