republished with permission from The End of Austin (this post was originally written during the spring semester)

I don’t like people, really. It’s mostly masked by my sunny disposition, but underneath it, I am just a wannabe Daria. My favorite place in the world is my couch. I order my coffee for pickup so I can run in and out without stopping. I like to go to bookstores alone and to watch endless seasons of TV shows and pet my cats. I like to write letters. I go to concerts alone, skipping the opener, not speaking to anyone around me.   I like my friends, I do, but they will tell you it is the rare event that I show up at a bar or a party or whatever. I’ve found myself considering bailing on zoom hangouts. 

In some ways, quarantine is made for someone like me. Indoor activities! No bars! Time for my hobbies (there are many).  I will continue to exercise and eat and learn and write inside my apartment. But I’ve realized my love of being alone, of being an “inside cat,” of naps and baths and my laptop is premised on the existence of an outside world, the existence of a beyond I prefer to stay away from. My target run today was overwhelming, but not in the usual ways:  there was no over-stimulation from the bright lights, anger at the crowds, nor a desire to buy every floral print dress in the store. Instead, everyone was wearing a mask. The clothes section was virtually empty, part of it now devoted to order pickups. After all, we aren’t going anywhere. The displays in the technology section were silenced. There were no kids grabbing at legos and dolls. The Easter candy wasn’t picked through. The “summer” section, with its patio seating and baby pools, seemed to be mocking me from a time, a place, that would never exist. I bought some food, a new colander, and even combed through the office supply section, looking, I suppose, for a semblance of normalcy. It wasn’t there. 

What becomes of the desire to stay inside, when there is no outside to escape? No people gathered at the bars and pizza places, no movies, no shows to recover from. Of course, I’m sheltering in place. But my sense of identity, of myself, of my life, has been constructed in deference to an imagined world outside of my apartment that has ceased to exist.