Isolation Diaries: Emma
Alone Together
May 28th, 2020
I’m twenty-one years old and I’m an American student normally studying in the United Kingdom, but I was on my year abroad in Paris when the Coronavirus outbreak began. The last time I saw someone my own age was when I said goodbye to my flatmate on March 17th, over two months ago. I’ve been in isolation since then, like everyone else in the world.
After our university closed this spring, when France went on lockdown and the borders became more strict – when it reached the point where people were required to carry paper documents every time they left their apartment, to go to the grocery store, to go to work, or to go for a run – my friends and I all decided it was time to go home. A few of us were on a weekend away as rumors about France closing began to circulate, and by the time we came back, train tickets were booked and most of the study-abroad students were gone. I was able to say goodbye to three friends. Many people didn’t even finish packing, they just took what they could carry in suitcases and left half of their belongings in their apartments, hoping that the borders would later open enough to drive back from the UK and collect their items in a few months.
Leaving Paris was one of the most gut-wrenching decisions that we had been asked to make, as the city had become a symbol of something much more to us than beautiful buildings and fresh croissants. It was supposed to be eight months of freedom, our last year before dissertations and jobs applications began, when we would ultimately be thrust out into “the real world.” It was our last chance to define who we wanted to be. It was eight months to grow.
Paris had just started to get really, really good. Our first semester of hard work paid off: we finally knew who our people were, we had time to do all of the things we’d spoken about since fall, and after months of pushing through deadlines and rainy weather in the hopes of a lovely spring on the horizon, our time was cut short after the first weekend of sun. But I was coming back to the United States because my mom was dying.
My mom had stage four non-small cell (non-smoking) lung cancer. She had fallen into very poor health suddenly at the start of the year, and I left university to spend all of February in Seattle with her after I received an email from my grandfather. Mom went into kidney failure, she will die in the next two days, come home. My mom made the impossible decision to do an operation which was incredibly uncomfortable and dramatically changed the way she could exist afterwards, in order to say goodbye to my sister and I. She got more time, so I returned to Paris to resume classes, only to be forced by the lockdown to return two weeks later.
Flying back to America, I quarantined in a hotel for two days as my younger sister left college in Colorado. We moved into the basement of the rental home where my mom and grandpa were staying, very wary of the fact that she would certainly die if we somehow gave her the Coronavirus. Alex and I stayed in the basement for ten days, my grandpa left, and we graduated to the upstairs to help take care of Mom. We had several weeks alone together, but her condition kept deteriorating rapidly, and it felt like her doctors had entirely given up on her, swept away by the drama of the pandemic and bureaucratic ineptitude. As her pain became unbearable, Mom decided to fill her prescription for Death With Dignity, a program which is rightly legal in Washington State. A brief phone call was the only goodbye she could offer to her own mother and her closest friends. It tore at my heart. On April 20th, my mom died at fifty-one years old, with my sister, my grandpa, and I by her side.
The three of us spent the next day packing the house and left the morning after, taking turns driving to California, where we would stay with my grandfather until we figured out what came next. We all tried to push through our grief, to remember and forget, to organize Mom’s affairs. Alex finished her schoolwork and exams in record time. She was like a machine. It was incredible.
I was convinced for two weeks that I wanted to die. I secretly begged to get cancer so I could go the same way mom did. Life did not matter anymore, and the reality of living without her was too much to bear. It wouldn’t sink in that she could actually be gone. By week three, I felt quasi-normal, but I realized that in having done nothing but lay on the ground in the sun in an attempt to negate reality for weeks, I was on track to fail out of my third year of university in ten days. I tried to pull myself together, but I became convinced that I wouldn’t function normally ever again. I wanted to drop out. I couldn’t write my essays. I tried for a week and I still couldn’t get it done.
There wasn’t anyone I cared about, or anything I cared to do. My friends meant nothing to me, nor did my remaining family. They all became notifications on a phone screen, more tasks on the to-do list which I never got around to, little reminders of the distant life I had just a few weeks before. Alex and I didn’t have a house, because Mom sold ours last summer to move in with a friend and save money for treatment and travel, so there wasn’t anywhere I felt like we belonged. There was nowhere to call home. My mom had been my home.
It is such a surreal experience to lose the person that matters to you the most in the world, because everyone else gets bumped up in priority afterwards, not because your feelings towards them have changed, but because there is one less person to love.
In week five, I went to New York, hoping that a change of scene might help. Some days I almost felt normal. Then I felt guilty about not feeling horrible. I moved in with my dad and his wife and her twelve-year-old son, finishing my work and passing all of my classes (I hope). It is now week six, post-Mom. I have been here on Long Island for eleven days. Time is meaningless. I want to see my friends. But I am grateful, because there are so many things in my life which I am very lucky to have.
I feel much more like myself now, but for a very long while, this isolation which everyone is going through seemed entirely bizarre. My family didn’t get any of the opportunities that grieving people are able to have in normal times. No one could see us, we couldn’t visit friends or relatives, there was nowhere to go if we needed an escape, and Alex and I felt like eternal houseguests, constantly accommodating ourselves into the routines and spaces of other people’s lives. I had never been so entirely alone.
I grew up with depression which faded in and out for most of my life until I was eighteen, when I began university and found real friends, freedom, and the kind of connection I lacked before. I am used to isolation, because it is what I experienced all through school and during every summer since. I am accustomed to leaving my friends in the United Kingdom and flying seven hours back in time to a small town in Idaho which I love very much, but which often feels like an eddy, where I circle old emotions and struggle against waves that only lead downwards. It is always difficult to watch my friends an ocean away meeting up with each other, going to concerts, museums, pubs, and spending time with their families together. I don’t remember what it would feel like to have both my parents, my sister, and I in the same room for a pleasant meal.
I was even jealous of people’s pets. I begrudged friends who sent pictures while walking their dogs before, because I missed ours, but a year ago, our grandmother had to take our three dogs when my mom couldn’t care for them anymore. We found out the same day Mom died that my sister’s dog had passed away, too. And as insignificant as it seems, we were upset that the opportunity to grieve for a little dog which we had loved for fourteen years had been stolen from us, by a much crueler and more horrible loss. It is strange how a picture of a puppy, a family dinner, or a few friends smiling together could fill me with such anger and jealousy. Realistically, this is just me soaking in my own pity party. I have to check myself, because it’s a very easy habit to slip into.
In a twisted way, I was glad that lockdown and Coronavirus seemed to even the playing field for isolation. Everyone else finally realized what it felt like to live with your family alone, to only be able to communicate with friends via FaceTime or text, and to watch the world through the lens of a social media feed. It was comforting knowing that the FOMO I felt was the same that everyone was going through, even if timezones still made communication and classes difficult. This camaraderie is slipping away now as lockdown restrictions ease for many of my friends, but selfishly, it was nice to know for just a minute that we were all in the same boat.
I realize that my sister and I are incredibly fortunate. We have so many people who have offered us kindness, consistency, and a home. We have a roof over our heads and food on our tables, and we don’t need to stress that it has become impossible to find a job. We are very well taken care of. And this solitude is nothing new to me. The most frustrating part is how far time stretches out in front of us, knowing that there are still months to go before I will see friends and people my own age again. Months of living in other people’s homes, months of being in the wrong country, months of feeling like I don’t belong anywhere. So I’m trying to be mindful of my solitude. I’m trying to do what I can with this isolation. Like everyone else, it’s a struggle to stay sane. I find that tears still slip out most days, I can’t sleep most nights, and when I do, my dreams are haunted. I find myself frustrated, sad, hopeless, filled with rage, and numb very frequently, but I am trying not to let these moments get me down.
There are several things that keep me going, especially during quarantine. Mainly, I try to create small routines where I can. I wake up only when I can’t sleep any longer, and first thing in the morning, I always pour myself a cup of coffee. I listen to podcasts while I make breakfast and stretch in the kitchen until I get bored. I go for a run around midday – though this will definitely need to change as the sun will soon be hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk. My afternoons are spent working in the yard, reading on the beach, editing Ensemble magazine, or tutoring my stepbrother. I’ve never gardened before, but there is something very satisfying about working with your hands in the dirt in solitude – it isn’t glamorous, but it’s a pretty good way to blow a few hours. My dad cooks dinner in the evenings and we all eat together and have wine and talk. It’s nice. I don’t cook nearly as much as I did before. I kept fucking up when I cooked while my mom was dying, so I don’t enjoy it now. I can’t deal with the disappointment of recipes going wrong. And that’s okay, I know, but what an odd sentiment that we have to keep telling ourselves this now.
Sometimes we sit on the porch to watch the people walking by with their dogs, saying hello and chatting to neighbors who stop on our lawn, desperate for social interaction. I like how quarantine is redefining social interaction and community. I think we’re shaping a better world.
A lot of the time, I have to allow myself the leniency to do nothing. I became very good at this after my mom died. Actually, who am I kidding? I’ve always been good at doing nothing. I know the debate about whether to be productive or not to be is an infinity loop right now, but I think laziness is highly important in proper doses. And yes, you get to decide what that dose is for yourself.
The thing I’m working on the most is creating soft spots in the world just for myself. Maybe this sounds odd. By soft spots, I mean places where I feel safe and comfortable when everything else does not. Sometimes this is the quiet beach I stop at to sit or to cry or to write on my own. Sometimes it’s the walk I take when the people I’m living with are frustrating me. Sometimes it’s searching “James Blake” on Spotify and getting under the covers for a while so I can try to feel something. Just feel. Sometimes it’s taking the car for a drive, or going for a run.
So, dear isolation diary and fellow quarantiners, I don’t think anyone really knows what to do anymore. Our world is changed. Mine definitely is. And all I can say is thank God for the internet, because it’s giving me a new home.
Emma Hemingway is a third year student at the University of Edinburgh studying International Relations. She is the founder, web designer, and Editor-in-Chief of Ensemble Magazine.