Homeward Bound

Stella Peg Carruthers | she/her

I live in a bubble without hugs or high fives. Handshakes have been outlawed for a while but when you can’t meet other people point blank, the difference between being alone and loneliness feels personal. Those in solo bubbles have to keep their distance from everyone. The last weeks have made me realise this acutely. Jacinda tells us to be kind but how do you practice kindness when you only have yourself to be kind to?

I clearly remember the day before the world changed.  We were all anxious. Circling our computers to get the latest news. We worried rather than worked. Working at the uni library, I was a frontline observer to the rising fears. Students strode past, fast, in a state of fearful procurement. We issued piles of books to post-grads so they could continue their research from home. Staff members requested mass resource digitisations. My team took turns in supplying candy to sweeten the blow of an increasingly mad world.

Work was weird and fearful. The world, even more so. People panic-bought loo rolls, coffee, chocolate, and booze. Public places emptied out. Folks fast walked down the streets trying not to meet each other’s eyes. I smiled at strangers. Made eye contact when I could. I knew these interactions might be all I had if a lockdown happened as it had overseas. A self-classified introvert, I wasn’t too worried about alone time. What I was worried about was the wider effects of lock-down on the world as we know it. 

An ardent RNZ girl, I was up-to-play with the politics. Increasingly, there were reports of border controls, both here and overseas.  Quarantine situations were enforced for returnees to Aotearoa. There was the rising death toll in Italy. I also heard whispers of an economic downturn, or even recession.

This was before lock-down. If anxieties were running high prior to Jacinda’s announcement on Monday 23 March, after that, the nation seemed fucking terrified. Am I terrified? No. Am I more than a little scared? Yes. While I’m not full-on-freak-out neither am I totally okay. I’m surviving right now rather than thriving

My version of survival means living in a solo bubble. It is also characterised by living in a tiny space, my studio bedsit with one room and a laundry/ bathroom. But I have a view out over Wellington city that makes my world feel more expansive than physical space alone can create.

Pre-COVID-19 I worked part-time in a capital ‘j’ ‘Job’, spending weekday mornings at the Rankine Brown library and a few hours a week at a community centre. My afternoons were spent pursuing my side hustle as a freelance writer. In some ways my life hasn’t changed much. I just work from home all the time instead of some of the time. 

While I'm alone in my bubble, I wanted to get out of my own head. I talked to other isolators, most solo bubble lifers, to compare experiences. 

Both solo-isolators, Helen, a writer, and Sarah*, a young professional, mentioned how the lockdown is giving people a better way to understand their everyday reality. Both women live with chronic illness which often encompasses long periods at home as part of their normal.  They agreed that the greater accessibility of services was as Helen put it “both cool and weird.” 

I found comfort in drawing common themes from my interviews that reflected my own reality. We all considered the time to be creative as a real benefit of the lockdown. While I’ve been working on my writing and knitting, my interviewees were also getting their ‘make’ on with colouring in, crafts, and cooking. 

Another common concept was the idea that despite a lack of face-to-face interaction, somehow connection feels more open. That is, the connections we are having feel more authentic. They go deeper than surface questions about the usual courses and coughs. Interviewees mentioned how they are talking more to their friends during lockdown than they had done before COVID-19.  I, for instance, during the first weekend of lock-down had seven (yes, seven!) scheduled Zoom calls with friends. 

Human connection is super important to a sense of wellbeing. Solo isolators find themselves missing human touch. Emma, isolating with flatmates she met the day before lockdown, said ‘‘Fuck knows when this isolation will break, but I'm gonna do so much cuddling when it does.”

Cuddling aside, a common theme was valuing community more. I found this surprising considering how we’re all shut up in our houses.  Is it the value of what we no longer have? Or, is it a realisation of the various forms a sense of community can take? As a part-time community worker, I've been helping set up a range of virtual connection tools. Drawing on this experience, I see the community as still being present, just in a different way. We work hard to forge connections through digital means. While folks may be alone there are ways out there to help them feel less lonely.

Are there advantages to lockdown? As the students of a city long associated with high living costs, we’re all saving a shitload of money. Spending on consumables such as coffee and clothes has evaporated. We might still be paying rent and bills and buying groceries, but the discretionary parts of our budgets have been blown open. Is a perk of the lockdown one of financial savings? Maybe. Is it good for the environment? Kinda. However, many students work selling consumables so their income sources dried up overnight. They might now have less costs, but they also have less money coming in. 

We are also saving physical energy and that much discussed commodity—time. Commuting between bed and the kitchen table is far less arduous than braving the streets. It’s also a hell of a lot quicker. The movement restriction rules of the lockdown seems to nicely symbolise our sudden lack of personal choice. We’ve lost the freedom to go about the daily patterns of our lives. 

While we may be gaining dollars and time, I'm concerned with how we account for our days. My appetite and energy level fluctuations have had me setting weird hours. I’m starving one minute. Nauseous the next. Exhausted one hour. Then lacing up my sneakers for a run because I’m full of this weird frenetic energy that I need to release. 

A bonus of living in a solo bubble is being able to manage these fluctuations your way. As Helen says, “If you can’t sleep you can watch TV at 3AM and not disturb anyone else.” This ability to own a space, when so many of our freedoms have been restricted, is a freedom I cherish. It is the ability to attend to your emotional patterns as and when you see fit.

This is a storm of sickness. It is one of social restriction and limited freedoms. It is one of emotionally-charged weathers. Self-care. It’s a ‘Thing’, according to Pinterest and pop psychology. Self-care is supposed to help weather these storms. Well, we’re in one hell of a storm right now. But not the climate change induced one we all thought would be our next biggest challenge.

The social climate right now is one of communal grief. People miss people. I met a guy online recently. By now we’d normally be at the coffee date stage. In lock-down we’re instead telling each other deep and meaningfuls. We talk about what we miss. I miss the freedom of walking the city.  He misses going out to events. Our missing is mutual  but I still feel lonely. We don’t know when we’ll be able to meet and walk and event-go again. Emma also misses being able to go out to places of wider social contact such as theatre shows. I too miss these communal places where we’re together, but not. 

Emma mentioned missing casual connections, “Shoulders rubbed on The Quay. Smiles with passers-by”. Social distancing is never more obvious than when I’m on my daily walk.  It is when I see the bubbled folks out walking together that I really start to miss pre-COVID life. I give these groups a wide berth, adhering to the 2 metre guide. This act of avoidance feels emotionally difficult because what I really want is to be with people I care about. And I can’t be. Sarah* said she even misses work for the small social interactions. We still have casual greetings, but it’s different now. 

“We all say ‘hi’, as we run across the street away from [each other]”, Helen told me. We may greet each other but there is often anxiety underlying our interactions. 

Emma said she was concerned with the increased police presence and actions taken by the public regarding lockdown rules. Narking on strangers feels like a worry for our future society. These fear based actions build on having hostility towards people you don’t know. This mindset feels like something bigger and badder than we’d like to think is happening.

There are enough bad thoughts going around. We worry about ourselves, others, and the wider world. We regret saying no to past social invitations when now all we want, is to, as Emma put it, “go the fuck out”. 

By being forced to stay in we are also worrying about how we do spend our time.

In the media we hear about how much time we have gained. It’s true that we’ve gained time against the virus. But there is so much we feel we have to do. Keep up with the news. Look after ourselves. Try to earn money from home. Deal with financial worry if we can’t. Adding to the worry is that we aren’t using our time well. We’re not learning how to speak Spanish or getting super ripped or mastering the art of sourdough. A bigger worry is that we are not supporting our loved ones enough. Because if we are feeling lonely then they must be too. 

Lockdown has reminded me of the  difference between being alone and feeling lonely. Alone tends to be associated with the physical space, whereas loneliness is more mental. 

Both Helen and Andrea speak of how loneliness is about not feeling seen, heard and valued. Helen says that to her “Loneliness is a number of things smashed into one word”. The majority of these things are not about being alone but about a lack of connection. Andrea adds that “You can have thousands of people around but still feel lonely”. 

Emotional isolation is the underlying danger of social isolation. We can deal with physical isolation for a few weeks. However, as a social species, we need to connect with other people to feel ok.

The virtual world is full of jokey memes about the current COVID-19 situation. Most have been made to try and make people feel better about a bad situation. Some are funny. But some brush off other’s experiences for the sake of a laugh. Others don’t seem to consider varying situations and points of view.

Tasteless memes aside, I applaud those using creativity to support themselves and help others during lock-down. To me, creativity characterises a spirit of generosity towards a wider humanity. It also fills in time. Writing this article is an act of creative generosity on my part. It has certainly filled in some empty hours and provided exercise for my imagination. It has also felt like a way to reach out to others from my solo bubble and connect.

Connecting through writing has added value and meaning to my daily routines in solo lock-down. With no physical people to talk to, I find myself conversing reflectively with myself. My words have served as a space for self-expression when I’ve been socially isolated. In a wider sense, I see creativity as giving us imaginative freedom even when our physical liberties have been restricted for the greater good. I urge you to take this idea of making things and put it into practice. Make the decision to, as the FB frame says: “Stay the fuck at home”.