While the World Around Me Burns: Feeling Joy During a Global Pandemic

The house begins to rumble around 8:00 am, gently reciting its verses. The whoosh of a closing refrigerator. Rubber slippers sliding across the wooden floor. The fizz and snap of a first morning beer. The hollow click as the tv acknowledges the remote’s command. In about fifteen minutes, my cousin will pause his show and take a smoke break. He will lift the garage door under by bed, which will whine and creak and scrape its cries up through my floor. Then I will begin my work day.

For now, there is still quiet time. On brighter days I scoot to the sunspot on the side of the bed where my throw pillows and this week’s water bottles live. I kick through the items and bathe my exposed skin in the square pools of sunlight on my comforter. I read my Bible, journal, and practice my Spanish, all in the still moments before the Tasmanian tornado of children rips through the kitchen below. 

I am working from home. My family likes to poke fun at my work from home, but I think they respect it. While they shelter their references to work and meeting with air quotes, they refrain from knocking on my door during the day, and most of the chatter falls silent when I stream calls through the kitchen on speakerphone at lunchtime. 

Every evening around 5:30, I log off of work and procrastinate to avoid my jog through the neighborhood. My workout outfit is assembled piece by piece between long scrolls on Instagram and Twitter. When I am finally dressed I coach myself down the driveway, to the street, and begin. I almost never want to start my work out, but when I finish I tend to feel invincible. 

In the evening we gather. No one posts an invitation to the kitchen, but somehow we all end up there. Someone is at the stove cooking for the majority. I wear my smelly trophy through the kitchen as I make my own dinner. Five of us are in a 60-day weightloss competition and this is how we gloat: with protein shakes, healthy dinners, and sweat-soaked clothes. Any thought I have of a quiet meal is erased by my 6 and 8 year-old cousins competing for every scrap of my attention. They want to know where I am sitting for dinner. They flank me on either side. There is one more game of Uno at the kitchen table, which I insist I can’t join because I have to be up for work. Here I endure my last work-from-home scoff of the day. 

I climb the stairs and shower. I drink water, journal, and close my eyes, preparing for the eventual rumble of another day. This is what it’s like to be quarantined in the Price household. 

We are rolling into  the middle of my fifth week at home. As every email from every retailer to whom I’ve ever given my information says, we are living in unique, unprecedented, and uncertain times. I am surprised by how easily I’ve fallen into a nice groove. 

Less surprising is the guilt. I feel guilty for my contentment with my situation. I feel guilty for wanting another week at home. I feel guilty for not being over these four walls yet. I don’t really miss my coworkers, though I’m sure that when I return to work my avatar will say I did. I don’t mind working from my bed every other day. I’ve commandeered my father’s office for the days when I need a change of scenery. I feel less pressure in the evenings. I don’t shove to-do lists down Saturday morning’s throat. I don’t rush to prep my meals or shop for groceries. Laundry day has two loads: lounge clothes and gym clothes. I am safe, in my home, in my room every day, and this somehow feels like I’m living the dream. 

I do acknowledge a bigger world around me. One that is aching from the loss of work. One in which people are risking their lives working overtime, stocking grocery shelves, delivering packages, working in pharmacies, cleaning hospitals. People are falling ill. People are dying. I am undoubtedly living through an unforgettable part of history, where so many people are suffering. And that’s why it’s so important for me to tighten the scope and recognize my contentment and keep the blood flowing through my own storyline. 

I am in recovery. I have not felt the sensation of thriving for three years now. In those three years I felt like the world around me flourished while I shrunk and suffered, battling grief, depression and my relentless inner critic. This moment, when the world is on pause, just happens to be the moment in which I can finally breathe again. 

I grant myself permission to be well multiple times a day. I remind myself that I never asked for permission to be unwell, never hesitated or thought to match my mood with the world around me when depression darkened my doorway. I grant myself permission to know my mornings by name before blindly rushing into them. I grant myself permission to enjoy time with my family in our rumbling home. I grant myself permission to make art of all kinds, using scissors and glue, paint and pain, words and music. I grant myself permission to remove toxicity from my life. I grant myself permission to thrive. 

It is a privilege to feel joy and growth at this time. It is a privilege to be for my anxiety levels to be low enough for self-reflection. It is a blessing to experience small triumphs and inner peace while the world around me burns. For that, I am grateful. 

I hope you all are finding little ways to thrive.