2020: Covid Lockdown
In March of 2020, I was freshly divorced and in the middle of a huge life shift. I knew I wanted to leave the Bay Area, where I'd lived for the past six years, and get back to Southern California. I'd packed up my life, moved in with friends in the East Bay, but was visiting LA frequently. During one of these trips, I found out that my job's onsite office in San Francisco would be closing and shifting to remote work, as Covid-19 cases began spiking worldwide. By the end of that week, everything was locked down, and my weekend visit on my friends' couch turned into three weeks.
I think everyone who was old enough to be conscious of what was happening has their own weird memories from that time. It was such a strange thing to feel simultaneously so scared and so connected to other people. I was deeply blessed to be locked down with friends I've known for many, many years, and who I've all but lived with in the past- we spent those first few weeks drinking a lot of coffee with flavored creamers, ordering a lot of weird little treats, playing many hours of animal crossing (more on that in a bit), and watching long lets plays on youtube. It really felt like a liminal space, but a cozy one.
Eventually, I felt able to hop into my car and make the six hour drive home. My friends in the East Bay had set me up in their spare bedroom, and I worked hard to make it as cozy and rejuvinating as humanly possible.
One of many wonderful things about living with these friends was that their pets were always available for a little cozy hangout time, too.
I don't really know how to describe the feeling of that first year. It was so surreal. I found myself returning to my childhood habits of sleeping at odd hours and spending a lot of time in my room. It's also strange because I felt a new level of fear, and worry, both due to fear of getting sick and also due to the breakthrough of active, visible unrest happening in America (a lot of which was previously tamped down on by media), but I also felt strangely calm and able to properly rest and slow down for the first time in my life. It was a lot of different things all at once, for sure.
I tried to get out for a walk every day, at least. As someone with depression, I knew it was a mandatory thing. My friends' neighborhood was near a nice green riverbed, which made for a great little escape into the world.
