To Go Out Or Not

If I had an ice-cream for every time I have said no to going out, I would be sleeping in an ice-cream parlour, creating my own flavours in the morning, and writing odes on muffin tops and thunder thighs in the evening. And now that going out seems like a complicated chore, I cannot help but wish I could go back and go out.  

Besides the usual changes, I feel closed as well. How do I put this? Well, something as trivial as asking for directions is a task now. The last time I wanted to ask a lady working at a store if she could hand me a blouse in a smaller size, I felt a lump in my throat. For a good one minute. Something had changed. A friend of mine concurs. She feels anxious everywhere now, at parks, grocery stores, cafes. Social interaction has never been more challenging.

The only things that still feel sort of normal are online deliveries and Google Meets. The former, where we meet the delivery guy for less than a minute, both masked, reluctant to even look at each other, is something that has been a constant for almost a year now. We have gotten used to it. And as far as the latter is concerned, there seems to be a feeling of safety in knowing that people are on a screen, not sharing the same space.

All this seems subtle at the moment. Most of us are not really hurling insults or locking ourselves in a dark room after all. But this slight reluctance to talk to fellow humans might just be the beginning of a problem that is much deeper, read tendency to prolong the confinement tomorrow when we may no longer need it. So what can we do to make sure we are not stuck in a limbo forever? I can think of sending long e-mails, having deep conversations with at least one person this year, taking a deep breath, asking our questions to people despite the anxiety.

But what I feel is the most important thing at the moment is to accept that we are becoming less social, reading people less accurately, have started finding comfort in solitude. I would start with this acceptance first. The acceptance that there is a problem, not bigger than the pandemic, but big enough to affect our mental health in the long run.

And whether to go out or not, it's now something that should be up for a discussion. What shouldn't be up for a discussion is that once we go out, we should probably talk, fight that urge to move to a different lane once we see someone we know. 
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