To going out with friends, celebrating milestones, starting new jobs, and joining happy hours, drinking soups in the middle of winter because that's all I would crave, watching a foreign virus kill and sicken people from far away. To washing my hands - just in case - and a trip to another city to see a friend, washing my hands more often than usual and reading the news from Washington and California, washing my hands with urgency and suddenly escaping crowded places because you don't know where these strangers have been. To "it's not that bad we can't freak out we need to remain calm" and two weeks for the infection to show symptoms, to suddenly wanting to cancel all my plans and stay home, when is my job going to send me to work from home? To my anxiety while riding the E train in the mornings and to social distancing, the numbers are increasing in New York and I’m coughing right now: is it spring allergies or is it the virus? It’s QUARANTINE and six feet apart in America but my supermarket is still really crowded, dos metros de distancia en España e Italia and my mom is scared now, the virus is in the air, it's on cardboard, it's on metal surfaces, it's all over memes on social media, it's in my head every night before I go to sleep, it's my family 6,000 miles away if anything happened to me, it’s thousands of people dying because there aren't enough beds, rooms and respirators for them. It’s #WFH working from home and my friends canceling their baby showers and graduations, and all the schools are closed and teachers and students have been digitized and I wonder, will this change our human experiences and interactions and those moments with each other we always took for granted when we didn't think twice about closeness and sharing a drink or a lipstick with a friend. It’s zoom meetings, frozen screens, bad connections, awkward moments, overly-compensating co-workers, people who escape the rawness of this situation with memes and tv shows, people who grieve the loss of their routines, people who lost a reason to wake up every morning, people who rediscovered a reason to wake up every morning, and I’m baking but not from scratch because I don't have the patience to follow instructions, and making edibles to make me feel something, and bernie sanders dropping out of the race, and yoga with Adriene on YouTube, and belly dancing with Leila, and hour long zumbas and whatever other web workout out there, to days when I wake up not wanting to say or move anything at all. To watching Jimmy Fallon tape his show from home and I can tell he's trying very hard to keep it together his hair is messy his daughters are adorable (but toddlers) his wife is his rock but he still makes me laugh so much, and watching Stephen Colbert imitate our president to a silent room in his house and he needs the audience reaction so badly so everything he says is kinda sad and hilarious at the same time, and Trevor Noah is me in so many ways we are both handling quarantined life pretty well, or are we in denial? I’msothankful to have my cat Noche with me, we've gone through some crazy life changes these past few years and my friends ask me to show her on camera lately because she is so cuddly and selfcare-ish. To online happy hours and watching Schitt’s Creek episodes while I work (David is a mood amirite?) to playing the sound of waves on spotify to help me fall asleep and being productive and feeling true to myself, and also not productive at all because I am disconnecting from this capitalist machine, and this state has always been so violent against immigrants but especially now, and resiliency in the face of fascism and are we strong enough to withstand this shit? To stimulus checks and corporate bailouts and surviving this traumatic time and processing it later, my supermarket is not as crowded anymore and the weather is getting warmer but we all wear masks and gloves now and evade each other's paths. When we get out of this, how different will we be? To endings and beginnings and the pain in between transitions, heartbreaks and zoom dates, overly caffeinated and drunk work from home days, to sleeping and waking up late, to cloudy skies that make you wanna stay inside, and sunny days that make you wanna drop everything you're doing just to feel sand under your feet again while you hear the waves crashing in the shore, ese sonido que produce la marea que te recuerda que fluyas como ella, inala y exala, inhale and exhale.
--April 2020
