Isolation? Completed it, mate.
I’ve been social distancing for a few years it seems, spending hours whiling away in my bedroom doing naught to zero. If you met me now you might think I was always this way. It’s a continuation on from what I was saying last year in the inaugural “look at me I’m still sober” post… has it really been that long? Since becoming a sober person people assume I am also sober in personality and have always shunned fun.
I’ve seen a few people on Twitter talking about their first isolation cry, and I experienced it yesterday. That’s not to say that it’s the first cry I’ve had during the lockdown, as in rather “unprecedented circumstances” (a contender for phrase of the year, right?) I had to attend a livestream of my grandmother’s funeral straight from the crematorium. But it was yesterday when I was rushing up the stairs at 19:59 to open up my window and clap for our carers that I shed a tear out of the blue.
The clapping is a great way of showing appreciation to people who are much braver than we, but I fucking hate it. I feel like a robot. There’s a lady opposite who every week starts off the ritual by checking her phone and then monotonously bangs wooden spoon to saucepan for a few minutes. I clapped this week and my palms itched à la Audrey Horne. Some paltry fireworks exploded in the distance and sweet birds dispersed in panic, and cats scrambled across the carless street and people stood a little bit further than their mortgage-permitted patch and caused a very small din. What’s wrong with that? I ask myself the same thing. I should be finding it lovely and twee and not just a marking of another Thursday come and gone.
The thing that I am finding the hardest is not to get too angry, or too political as some might say. I resist the urge to shout from my window. You see, I was at the counting of the ballot papers for this ward on December 12th and I saw cross, after cross, after cross to vote for a party who starved our NHS to the bare bones. And now they clap for them? But it’s not political, I’m told. I see Facebook posts saying that people who think about politics at this time are pathetic mongers of vitriol. But I can’t help but be angry.
Over the years my friends have scattered back to where they came from, like a national populist’s dream. Either that or they remain in the little life I left in Munich, which calls to me like a saved game file of The Sims which I haven’t played for a few years. As if I’d just load it up and I would be cycling furiously across the traffic lights to run down to the u-Bahn, and catch the 16:21 to Sendlinger Tor, and swing into work as if I hadn’t escaped over two years ago. Time softens all blows, and it seems strange to imagine it as an escape. I haven’t even visited since I left. I would have, but I found myself caught in the grasp of a relationship with a man who frowned in deep jealousy if I even mentioned a life before him. You have to laugh. You go around and collect experiences and suddenly you have friends in places like America, Australia and Austria and then end up in love with a boy from Southend-on-Sea and feel trapped again. Time will only sharpen my resolute on the decision to draw that year of misery to a close. I felt caged and stagnant long before it was a Government imposed lockdown. If you were to team this up with a climate-fuelled decision not to fly anywhere then you just get used to the idea of not seeing your friends anymore.
Timehop, the handy app that collates all of your past traumas into one user-friendly, scrollable place puts nostalgia at the forefront of an idle brain. All the boys I spent my early twenties sexting are having babies with lovely girlfriends or wives. Every girl I ever snogged has a long-term boyfriend. The people I used to jabber away to at 5am have proper jobs and I am still just a waitress - a furloughed waitress, but still. When all the dust has settled from this pandemic I will go back to up-selling fries with poncey quiches. Yes, I have written a novel which is no small feat and I must give myself credit for that. But in true Ellen fashion, it sits there waiting to be edited. Perhaps I am afraid of success.
Maybe I just don’t have the energy any more after a month of being out of work. You’d think that free-time away from the stresses of the real world (lol) would be conducive to fantastic creativity, but if that’s true, I have yet to experience it. I’m frustrated as I was mere days away from moving into a flat of my own when the country was pulled to a standstill and I’m not getting any younger, you know. I write this from my bedroom at my parents’ house. It’s lovely. But is it a step forward?
As I said, time softens every blow. One of the reasons I left Germany was because I felt suffocated by having to learn German and feeling switched on all the time, just in case someone struck up a conversation with me. I loathed speaking the language at work. So I moved home. How will I spend the rest of my Friday? Polishing my der, die and das as I stare out of the window at the sunny blue sky. You have to laugh. Have a good one, Leute.
I’ve seen a few people on Twitter talking about their first isolation cry, and I experienced it yesterday. That’s not to say that it’s the first cry I’ve had during the lockdown, as in rather “unprecedented circumstances” (a contender for phrase of the year, right?) I had to attend a livestream of my grandmother’s funeral straight from the crematorium. But it was yesterday when I was rushing up the stairs at 19:59 to open up my window and clap for our carers that I shed a tear out of the blue.
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| I haven't even watched Twin Peaks in years, but as I'm writing on this blog again it felt fitting. |
The clapping is a great way of showing appreciation to people who are much braver than we, but I fucking hate it. I feel like a robot. There’s a lady opposite who every week starts off the ritual by checking her phone and then monotonously bangs wooden spoon to saucepan for a few minutes. I clapped this week and my palms itched à la Audrey Horne. Some paltry fireworks exploded in the distance and sweet birds dispersed in panic, and cats scrambled across the carless street and people stood a little bit further than their mortgage-permitted patch and caused a very small din. What’s wrong with that? I ask myself the same thing. I should be finding it lovely and twee and not just a marking of another Thursday come and gone.
The thing that I am finding the hardest is not to get too angry, or too political as some might say. I resist the urge to shout from my window. You see, I was at the counting of the ballot papers for this ward on December 12th and I saw cross, after cross, after cross to vote for a party who starved our NHS to the bare bones. And now they clap for them? But it’s not political, I’m told. I see Facebook posts saying that people who think about politics at this time are pathetic mongers of vitriol. But I can’t help but be angry.
Over the years my friends have scattered back to where they came from, like a national populist’s dream. Either that or they remain in the little life I left in Munich, which calls to me like a saved game file of The Sims which I haven’t played for a few years. As if I’d just load it up and I would be cycling furiously across the traffic lights to run down to the u-Bahn, and catch the 16:21 to Sendlinger Tor, and swing into work as if I hadn’t escaped over two years ago. Time softens all blows, and it seems strange to imagine it as an escape. I haven’t even visited since I left. I would have, but I found myself caught in the grasp of a relationship with a man who frowned in deep jealousy if I even mentioned a life before him. You have to laugh. You go around and collect experiences and suddenly you have friends in places like America, Australia and Austria and then end up in love with a boy from Southend-on-Sea and feel trapped again. Time will only sharpen my resolute on the decision to draw that year of misery to a close. I felt caged and stagnant long before it was a Government imposed lockdown. If you were to team this up with a climate-fuelled decision not to fly anywhere then you just get used to the idea of not seeing your friends anymore.
 |
| Are chapters of life just like a Sims save file, ready to be re-delved back inside at your leisure? |
Timehop, the handy app that collates all of your past traumas into one user-friendly, scrollable place puts nostalgia at the forefront of an idle brain. All the boys I spent my early twenties sexting are having babies with lovely girlfriends or wives. Every girl I ever snogged has a long-term boyfriend. The people I used to jabber away to at 5am have proper jobs and I am still just a waitress - a furloughed waitress, but still. When all the dust has settled from this pandemic I will go back to up-selling fries with poncey quiches. Yes, I have written a novel which is no small feat and I must give myself credit for that. But in true Ellen fashion, it sits there waiting to be edited. Perhaps I am afraid of success.
Maybe I just don’t have the energy any more after a month of being out of work. You’d think that free-time away from the stresses of the real world (lol) would be conducive to fantastic creativity, but if that’s true, I have yet to experience it. I’m frustrated as I was mere days away from moving into a flat of my own when the country was pulled to a standstill and I’m not getting any younger, you know. I write this from my bedroom at my parents’ house. It’s lovely. But is it a step forward?
As I said, time softens every blow. One of the reasons I left Germany was because I felt suffocated by having to learn German and feeling switched on all the time, just in case someone struck up a conversation with me. I loathed speaking the language at work. So I moved home. How will I spend the rest of my Friday? Polishing my der, die and das as I stare out of the window at the sunny blue sky. You have to laugh. Have a good one, Leute.
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