We’re all living in a dystopian world, and we’re all having to deal with this apart from the people we’re living with.

Somehow it doesn’t feel real. What’s happening to everyone in the world right now. And while I can genuinely call myself fortunate, my family is healthy, together and keeping each other in what these times can only call sane, you can’t help but feel for everyone else going through crap right now.

I guess it’s the demonizing of other people that’s making it harder. Everyone is facing a kind of isolation but also trying to be there for each other. Where we used to just run to each other for a real hug or just being in the same room, now it’s the one basic thing that’s keeping us alive and safe. We don’t know who has it, and a once innocent handshake can now literally lead to someone dying.

No man is an island, but it feels like we’re all now islands apart. For an unclear period of time. Until there’s a clear cut cure, until we know we can survive this as a species.

Technically, life hasn’t changed that much for me, I get up, I go to work without changing out of what I slept in, make food, eat food, clean up. But there’s something isn’t it, when your mere being is a threat to life. I am sure every introvert started this thing sure that they would be winning at isolation, but now more than 30 days later wanting to be with the people they’re not living with, or just feel the “normalcy” of everyday socialization. Of finding an end to the uncertainty of what will happen to us, or the economy, or the people at risk, or the possibility of finding a way to be with each other again.

The world is turning on each other a lot of the time, and it seems like we can’t celebrate anything, or mourn anything without getting some backlash. And I have been a coward, hiding, lurking at other people’s posts and writing while not being able to put into words what it is that’s going on, and overwhelmed with feeling everything and nothing all at the same time.

I’m closing one chapter of my life and starting a new one this month, which is scary in itself, but also a miracle in this climate. I will acknowledge how fortunate I am to be able to do this and keep going, but also know how far I’ve come in the past year (in weight gain at least, further than ever before).

Even a joke feels insensitive. And wrong. But I do hope that people find pockets of joy in this time. And if you can hold on to it and keep it close, do it.