quarantine Archives - Fran Moreland Johns

*Photo by Rostyslav Savchyn on Unsplash*

How, I wonder, do the imprisoned survive?

Covid quarantines are giving us a new appreciation for jail time. Me, at least. Personally, I just would not make it. Going to jail has always been low on my list of reasons to obey the law, but lately it has risen to the top. I do not handle isolation well, to put it unreasonably mildly.

Early on in the pandemic, when the geezer house in which I live was totally shut down, I had a doctor’s appointment. On my return I was told, by management people who without prior notice had been transformed into wardens, that I would need to quarantine in my apartment for the next two weeks. Maybe this had been posted somewhere before I left, but it had missed my notice.

“TWO WEEKS?” I shrieked. “In this very apartment? No quick trips to the outdoor restaurants? No walks in the parks? For TWO WEEKS?” It was not a pretty scene. Five days later the warden revisited to tell me I was cleared to leave the premises. During the interim period I had received three meals a day delivered to my door, done a good bit of pacing and totally caught up on emails and writing projects. But I had also felt myself going a little nuts. In five days. To clarify this absurdity a little further, I have a lovely 1600-sq-ft apartment with a balcony looking across San Francisco to the San Bruno Mountains, and a western view of extraordinary sunsets – something few jail cells boast. Still, I feared for my sanity throughout five long days.

Half the people I know are self-quarantining somewhere or other for up to two weeks, for the pleasure – or often the necessity – of traveling these days. For the most part, they seem to be suffering in silence, and I appreciate the fact that they are doing this to protect you and me. It’s slightly less common now, unless you’re doing international stuff; but because the Covid virus, in one variant form or another, is likely to be with us for many months ahead, quarantining is also likely to remain.

As I wimped my way through five days of isolation I experienced at least a half-dozen of what the Mayo Clinic identifies as symptoms of anxiety, including tension, restlessness, nervousness and “having a sense of impending danger, panic or doom.” This was the worst moment of all: an ice cream truck set up shop on the street below, midway through a warm afternoon. Almost pushed me over the edge – or off the 7^th floor balcony. That truck was just below my eyes, and I was forbidden to go downstairs and buy a popsicle. It would not have helped to think about people in prison who don’t see ice cream trucks outside. I survived by remembering I had a Haagen Dasz mini in the freezer.

If you suffer from anything similar to the above, I strongly recommend against visiting Hong Kong. A young friend of mine, an American who has lived and worked for four or five years in Hong Kong, recently came to the U.S. for a visit with friends and family. When we met for a brief reunion I asked if she would face quarantine on her return to Hong Kong. Whew. She will be escorted from the airport to a hotel not of her choosing, where she will spend 21 days in a room with bath. She will wear a bracelet tracking her every move, and if she leaves the room she will be faced with huge fines – and possibly worse. She will be able to order food and necessities but they will have to be left outside the door because no one will be permitted to enter the room. She will do her laundry in the sink. “Does the government foot the bill?” I asked. “No,” she said; “it will all be at my own expense. Travel is considered a luxury in Hong Kong.”

My visiting friend did mention, as we urged her not to leave her cellphone on the far edge of the outdoor table, that she is not the least afraid to walk home alone in Hong Kong at 4 AM. Autocracy has its privileges.

But I’m going nowhere near there. Or anywhere else, without my KN95 mask.

I brought this on myself. Not by committing a crime, I hasten to point out, but by leaving the building, which is forbidden. Two months behind on a medical appointment, and confronted with signs of problems ahead, I broke out. And the policy of the geezer house where I live was thus: leave the building, return to 7-day isolation. Solitary confinement.

There are limitless varieties of isolation these days: young singles working 12-hour days from within tiny apartments; frail elderly trapped in inaccessible homes; wheelchair-bound and disabled – we’re all in this together, but alone. My own isolation is embarrassingly fine by comparison: three meals a day delivered to the door, a sunny balcony with lovely views, plenty of music with which to interrupt the nonstop news on TV. But total isolation, for the vast majority of us hopelessly social creatures, is tortuous.

This is a commentary on solitary confinement. There is a reason why solitary confinement is employed as an ultimate punishment, and I think I have a tiny glimmer of insight into what that’s about. More relevant to the outside world, and to these days: all those mentioned above are facing today’s viral version of solitary confinement. It’s not intentionally punitive – though it so feels punitive – but this corner of Covid19-Land is a world unto itself. What follows is a report from inside Solitary.

Day One: On first closing the door behind me, there is a shock of desolation. I grab a glass of water out of the refrigerator, sit down at the computer and find myself in tears. I cannot imagine what it must be like to hear the cell door bang shut, but I have a sense of what isolated others felt on first hearing that Stay Home order. When talking on the phone later with a working-at-home friend she uses the term “unmoored,” which feels particularly appropriate. We highly social creatures are moored to each other just as are boats tied to docks; cut loose, we tend to drift, and the seas feel turbulent and full of danger.

Day Two: For someone who has seldom been bored, I feel myself fearing boredom. I consider calling my friend on the second floor, a noted poet and retired professor now totally blind, but there’s no way to phrase a question about boredom to her without seeming cruel. And as to my unmoored working-from-home friend, a union organizer/justice warrior – her workdays can run well past 12 hours; I think she’d welcome a little boredom. Still, it looms.

Day Three: Zoom and FaceTime have their benefits, but in some ways only heighten the yearning for real-time human interaction. Isolation leads to lethargy, which manifests as physical. With absolutely nothing wrong, I still feel unable to eat. I fix a bowl of plain rice; comfort food is comfort food. I wonder if any condemned prisoner has ever specified plain rice for a final meal? Also: why should anyone start wondering, ten minutes after a nap, when it will be bedtime again? Thankfully, the Rachel Maddow rerun – if I skip the 6 PM (PST) broadcast in favor of PBS NewsHour – sails unmoored boats, now reminded of real problems in the real world, straight into 10 PM.

Day Four: The interesting thing about lethargy and unmoored-ness is that they are interspersed with moments of anxiety. It’s an unspecified anxiety, but then, that may be how anxieties work. As I am one whose moments of anxiety usually happen about once a decade, I can’t say. All I know is that solitary confinement comes with anxieties. In addition to having generally been anxiety-free most of my life, I have also always loved periods of solitude. The difference between chosen solitude and enforced solitude is equal to the difference between night and day. Chosen solitude = peace, beauty, tranquility. Enforced solitude = anxiety.

Day Five: I feel myself having tipped over into something that would probably just give any self-respecting psychotherapist the creeps. Or the shakes. In five days, I have morphed from sane person to blob. I have, however, been firing off a lot of pathetic emails to the Resident Care Director and the Executive Director, they who are in charge of my case. They show up, together, at my apartment. They tell me they (presumably with the approval of the Virginia corporation which owns this plus several hundred other geezer houses) have re-thought this policy. If someone goes from Point A (here) to Point B (doctor’s office) using maximum caution (latex gloves, outside shoes to change, mask, hand-washing at either end, clothes washing on return) one need not be isolated. I resist pointing out how nice it would’ve been to have reconsidered that policy five days ago, because I am way too happy. And besides, I’m in a hurry to go down to the exercise room.

I think it is not irreverent to hear Martin Luther King Jr’s voice booming in my ear, “Great god a-mighty, free at last.”