Practising strict social distancing from reality

I am writing this from one of four regular cocooning spots in an apartment that is getting smaller by the day – not that I have any idea what day it is until around noon. The walls – white with no pictures or ornaments to punctuate their glare – inch closer to each other.

An earworm – one part of a song that was playing earlier on my speaker – is now on a loop around my bedroom, or so it seems.

I have been drawing the same pair of anime eyes on my Cyril Ramaphosa Foundation 2020 diary for the past 30 minutes or hours or days, and neglected online courses are idling in forgotten tabs on my laptop.

I am practising strict social distancing from reality itself.

Elsewhere, well-adjusted adults are posting immaculately composed images of some kind of alternate universe where being trapped in a living space for 50 days has harnessed the power of productivity.

Summer bodies are under construction and the fourth industrial revolution is now manifesting in the mass education of people who were once too busy to “have coffee some time”.

There are people who get out of bed every morning to greet the menacing glare of police and military contingents guarding the dystopian aftermath of the zombie apocalypse we never asked for – and jog.

On an even higher tier are working class heroes relabelled as “essential service” personnel, men and women whose jobs include keeping people alive and their environment safe and protected from this X-Files reject of a virus.

There are the volunteers and donors who are feeding the forgotten millions who are often left out of arguments about how best to deal with this disease.

But allow me to wallow in shameless self-pity for a second – I have a point:

In the mid-1600s when Black Plague was ravaging England, at a rate of 7,000 deaths a day, the modern man’s version of posting Tiger King memes was writing letters to each other – out of sheer dread and longing for normal life.

An archived letter penned by Reverend John Allin to Dr Phillip Frith of Rye on 30 September, 1665, reads: “I hope the lord will spare you to be useful to such as may want you in the land of the living. But we had need all be awakened to be ready, for we know not the day nor the hour when our lord will come, truly I think since the last bill the sickness is again encroaching and very much about us.”

So beautifully does this man articulate my sense of dread and uncertainty as I eat my way through an entire milk tart.

“I have hired my chamber again for another quarter of a year: if the lord grant life so long: I will if the lord please speedily collect my thoughts and finish this discourse of his sickness and send you, but I hinted in my last what a care and hurry I have been in.”

So if you’re also at an age you don’t want to talk about, suddenly finding yourself uncertain in your career, your life and whether you will ever drink again, you are not alone.

Things could be worse.

But according to The Lancet, quarantined staff were significantly more likely to report exhaustion, detachment from others, anxiety when dealing with febrile patients, irritability, insomnia, poor concentration and indecisiveness, deteriorating work performance, and reluctance to work or consideration of resignation.

In other words, boss, my exposure to quarantine conditions is most likely the core source of current and future signs of mental distress.

Simnikiwe Hlatshaneni.

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