Lockdown: Day 300

My goodness. In another 65 days, we would have all endured one whole year in lockdown. I can’t hardly believe it.

Do you remember what it was like in March last year? Most people started baking bread, cooking, reading more, sharing our thoughts about life in lockdown, and my favourite - how to use ordinary stuff around the house to workout.

I loved seeing these posts on my social media timeline. I used to chuckle so hard at some of them. I also used to run to my complex bin room and back regularly to avoid obesity. Eventually, my extra-lean CrossFit neighbour started joining me and we began building a solid friendship. The qualities in him are qualities I one day would love to have in my husband. I have noticed extraordinary things about people that I probably would have missed if life was not locked down.

When I was running with Jonno, my Strava timeline was home to some of the weirdest looking GPS artwork. Maps looked eerily similar to flaccid saucy spaghetti prints near a toddler’s dinner plate. I know you know what I’m talking about.

Fast forward 240 or so days. My social media timelines have morphed from innovative excitement to walls of painful eulogy and heartache.

I’m constantly arrested by the crying emoji. Each time my phone beeps with a new message, I cringe in anxious anticipation for a death notice. Just yesterday I received one of those. I felt wretched. I still feel wretched. I was praying for this gorgeous soul just after midday. By tea-time, she was dead. Life for her 6-year-old daughter is forever altered. She will never have her mother by her side again, physically. She will never…

The first three months of lockdown was hard for me because I allowed fear to grip my heart. Winter was even harder because I started to introspect. When I look inwards, I really look inside the depths of my psyche. I write lists, give myself deadlines, I think. I also adopt physical stillness and go deathly quiet for days. I can go almost a week without uttering a word. Usually, when I’m quiet I am thinking. It's nothing personal and I don't hate anyone. I'm just in a bubble of self-analysis, prayer, and fine-tuning. It's time spent motivating myself by doing ordinary things and making myself feel extraordinary. I fashion inward goals that I know will manifest positively. I begin dreaming and I nurture the blessings by recognizing them and protecting my mind.

Let's rewind to some of what I think a little. Death is one of those things I think of most. Where will I go? Will I be able to cook and eat my food? Will I get to see my earthly father? I can’t wait to see him, my friends who have died, my pets too, and of course God. To stare into the force that allows me to breathe, think, do, be, and feel. I have faith enough to know that when I die my work will be done. I don't want to waste or take for granted this space I have been gifted on this earth. Not even for a minute. This is probably why it's so unbearably hard for me to sit down and relax for an hour or two. I'd rather read or learn about something or someone.

Recently I started meditating to heal my mind that’s been so beaten by a spirit of negativity. Working in the news arena is hard because there is so much pain surrounding us. There's so much that I see that can't be unseen.

So the meditation was a conscious decision to divorce me from the world and filter what I allow in my life and in my space. It’s something new that I’ve never really been invested in. I’ve always considered running my meditation. Following a few sessions of conscious breathing, I am convinced that it still was. But that was before Covid-19 arrived on the scene.

Now my mind drifts when I run. Before I used to listen to my breathing and run to the rhythm of my own pulse. I would feel euphoric. I could feel my happiness beat it in my left eyeball because it twitched furiously when my heart started to pump. Now you know, when I say my eye is twitching, something or someone is getting me worked up.

These days I get cross at people who stroll around maskless and yet so unashamedly confident with their families. Some of them take up nearly half of the road and I often hear myself barking, “Sis, that’s selfish.”

I don’t know who that woman is but she’s a part of me and I always feel bad about biting remarks after I've uttered them.

Covid-19 is real. It’s the world’s biggest thief at the moment. It’s stealing more than just lives. It’s stealing joy, harmony, love, patience, and above all hope.

I don’t have to tell you about the severity of it. You know.

What you don’t know is your Covid-19 status at any given moment, unless you’re positive. That ignorance is not bliss. That ignorance is a weapon.

Close your eyes for just a second and let that sink in.

On day 300 of lockdown, I am begging you to be as still as you can.

I’m not saying don’t go out for bread and milk. I’m saying choose to be responsible by connecting as much as you can with yourself. Well enough to know that if you are displaying Covid-19 symptoms to stay at home and to quarantine.

Well enough to know not to go to a mall because you want to get out of the house. I know that you know that if you come into contact with someone who has tested positive for Covid-19, you should take that shit seriously.

Trust me when I say this, there can be a logical explanation for every cough, sniffle, headache, night sweat, bloody nose, a moment of fatigue and dizziness, and body ache. I have experienced all these symptoms and more in the past month. Every time it has happened, I’ve silently asked myself, what if you have Covid?

Every. Single. Time.

I don’t take chances and if any symptom persists for longer than 2 days without improving, I call my doctor. Consults are way cheaper online than they are in person. Like a car, prevention in my books is better than fixing something that’s broken. Don’t wait because sometimes waiting to see where your flu goes while still going to work with a sore throat for days can potentially be the death of someone you don’t even know. Why would you even take that risk?

I am not paranoid or scared, and I’m not trying to make you scared or paranoid either. What I am is responsible.

Are you?

Choose it if you are not and while you're at it, invite excitement into your fold because without it, without hope for the future, the rise of this year when it bakes will flop.

I encourage you to be encouraged and to dream bigger, despite your apathy.

No day will be the same and every day your eyes open is another gift to dance and move to the rhythm of your own heartbeat.

Don’t waste time.