When I was a little girl I was so scared of monsters hiding under my bed. I would turn the lights out and sail into bed, putting my whole self under the covers in one movement. I waited and waited, the air turning stale and suffocating, but I wasn't sure when it would be safe to come out from under the covers. How long would it be before the monster under the bed forgot about me or went back to where it came from? In the first weeks of the quarantine, the situation was surreal because I felt I had been expecting this. I was snug as a bug in a rug in my isolation (well, a bug on constant alert for a footfall coming down upon it).
Now though, it's surreal in the sense that the world has gone quiet, hollow. It seems to have stopped for a monster many of us cannot see.
I wonder what day it is, they go by in a blur.
Do I even exist?
Long text chats and funny quarantine memes used to be sent all throughout the day. Now, it's sometimes days between hearing from my groups.
No one can say yet when the quarantine will end. "Numbers are still coming in," they say. We have to flatten the curve, see how the countries ahead of us in this situation are doing.
We want to wait until the most optimal time, but I can't help thinking that that decision will still be an unpredictable one.
How long do we have to wait until we feel safe enough to come out from under the covers?
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