Obligatory Reflections on the Panoramic

Truthfully, I’ve wanted to write something, a reflection, an essay, a stream-of-consciousness, anything really, to release some of the pressure that must have been building within me for the past year. But that was the crux of the issue: where was the pressure exactly? The stress? The deep aching despair brought about by pandemic life? Everyone seems to be going through it, and what could possibly separate me from Everyone? Well, I’ve recently located the pressure. I stumbled upon the ache and I can confirm it does go all the way to my bones.

A little over a month ago, everything went sour in the blink of an eye: an infection, a week of horrific symptoms, a week in the hospital, a dead laptop, lost code for my thesis, a looming move to a new apartment (by force, not by choice), late homework assignments, and loneliness. It was the last item in this list that punched me the way a baker punches down dough after a successful rise. Each day the Sun shone through my window, many of those days I was awake to see it rise, and I had to contend with another full day of managing all my issues with no help. I prepared meals alone, I sat down to meals alone, I worked on assignments alone, I took hours-long breaks from said assignments alone, I forgot to end those breaks alone, I sat in deep thought alone, I processed all that was going wrong in my life alone, I went on walks alone, I grocery shopped alone, I returned to an empty apartment alone, I plopped down on the couch and turned on the tv alone, I eventually dozed off on the aforementioned couch alone, I awakened three hours later alone, and much to my chagrin the Sun was on its way to greet me for another day of gray and icy solitude. This schedule, for better or worse, wasn’t too different from the one I had been keeping all pandemic long, so I had to ask myself what changed. Had I finally grown tired of living alone? Did I want roommates? This most obvious conclusion actually wasn’t quite correct.

I did, and still do, prefer for my home to be a quiet place for reflection. It’s a space that I hold sacred, and since living alone it has truly become a fortress of solitude. However, appreciating that solitude hinges on the ability to keep the world (and coronavirus) out while maintaining my own peace within. When the juxtaposition between life outside my door and life inside my four walls ceases to exist, those four walls are no longer a citadel. They’re no longer protecting me from anything. They only serve to keep me trapped inside. Here is where my bones began aching. Since everything imaginable went wrong, the one thing I crave is distraction. But with life as I knew it over a year ago being but a distant memory and return to any semblance of it being unsafe, there is no distraction. The ruins of my own life lie strewn haphazardly across my apartment, a constant reminder of an ever growing to-do list and a similarly expanding list of fears and anxieties. My fortress became my prison cell and there is no respite. Only now has the full weight of the cruelty of our current predicament made itself known to me. The lack of delineation between in and out, here and there, work and play, self and other, has rendered it near impossible to reset. Clearing the mind is no longer an option. But why have I been impervious to this for so long?

The other day I set out on one of my frequent walks. I’m somewhat certain I take these walks with the intent of providing the mind-clearing distraction that has been evading me for the past month or so. I never quite know where I’m headed until I get there, and this time I landed at the grocery store as I often do. I would go on to pick up sundries needed around the house, such as squishy white bread and American cheese to recreate the sandwiches of my childhood that I still can’t live without. On the way there, I passed a man who said something I couldn’t quite catch as I had earbuds blasting pop music in my ears. I heard “something something faggot” and I quickly located my stoicism which was momentarily threatened, gathered myself, and returned to my brisk walking pace. This is a word I’ve been confronted with a million times before, but I began thinking. If I misheard this man, that raises the question of why I misheard him in that way. Why is there no other word I could have heard instead? I thought of how that particular mishearing is rife with implications about the way marginalized people move through the world prepared for and fully expecting to be confronted with the worst, just for existing as our authentic selves. There is no other person I know how to be besides the one that I am, and for some people that is great cause for concern. On the other hand, if I didn’t mishear him then…well that speaks for itself. As I walked back from the store with my quick bread and frighteningly yellow cheese, I felt surveilled. Every innocent glance from a stranger felt like stalactites of pure judgment impaling some aspect of myself I couldn’t place. I looked in mirrors, I straightened out my clothes, I did whatever I could think of to escape what I perceived as stares that may as well have lasted an eternity. I didn’t know which of those strangers would be the next shaggy haired blond man to call me a faggot, or maybe something else equally uninspired.

It is at precisely that moment that everything made sense. The pandemic has looked like peace for me because being indoors has meant being away from the stalactites. The world outside my door was a cave and my own home was where the sunlight touched Earth. At the intersection of queer and Black and chronically ill and whatever else I am, people that I truly and thoroughly relate to are hard to come by. Removing the shame from isolation, literally encouraging it as we have been this past year, I have felt free from judgment for the first time in many years, and as such I have found an unprecedented peace. Only when my own head became a sufficiently threatening thunderstorm so as to warrant evacuation did I realize there was nowhere else to go.

I feel like I’m floating most days. Time passes and I’m barely there to catch it. I wake up and it’s time to go bed again. Deadlines come and go, all the sting has been removed from them. What is the meaning of a deadline when it feels as though your entire world is unsnapping like the buttons of shirt that is a bit too well-worn? I don’t doubt that the wind will return to my sails in due time. I just need to relearn how to steer the ship.