Back in March when the reality of this pandemic first hit, my anxiety was at its highest. As we approach month three of isolation, two things have happened for me. One, all this has started to feel less strange, and two, I’m extremely unsettled by that. While some of what I’m doing and thinking feels like classic me, my altered mental state is truly shocking when I recall who I was circa February, 2020.
The best and worst part is that all of what I do and think is completely clichéd. Generally, I’m not someone who likes to blend into the crowd. I become instantly uncomfortable if I enter a room and feel indistinguishable from the pack. But when the pack starts cutting its own bangs and getting drunk on Instagram Live, things get a lot more interesting.
People are getting really creative to find joy and pass the time, and thankfully posting it to social media so that the rest of us are able to benefit from their inventiveness. I, for one, have thoroughly enjoyed watching and selectively attempting these trends, not in spite of their trendiness, but actually because of it. Knowing my crazy isn’t so far off from everyone else’s crazy gives me the only inkling of camaraderie and connection I can find these days.
In the spirit of paying it forward and helping others feel less alone, I’m sharing my personal experience with quarantine clichés, which have gotten progressively more extreme as I continue to not only lose my sanity, but also come to accept said loss.
