Random Thoughts
...
Indexed

Solitary confinement
...which is also late Oct pandemic notes

Prologue

For a short time recently I thought I had something to look forward to, and it was quite comforting. When it turned out I was in error, I realized just how little there seems to be to anticipate in this way these days.

To me, it seems to be a pernicious by-product of the pandemic-enforced solitude (both individual, and perhaps more importantly, the combined effect of our multiple individual solitudes).

It is somewhat like the "malnutrition" I compare a lot of our missing social connections to, in that it only slowly becomes apparent that something vital is absent from life, something that cannot be replaced with a substitute.

I am wondering if any other people (especially those going through this alone) are encountering a similar sense of emptiness - or even, at times, hopelessness - in this particular way?

10/21/20 7:45 PM

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(not posted anywhere - yet)

The general short and long term cure for mild depression for me is to be around people. It's not for nothing that I closed that discussion what seems like several months ago now with Petula Clark's "Downtown".

The hustle and the bustle is what I crave, the smells and the sounds, the flurry and the hurry that takes away the worries.

It's not a simple distraction.

I may not like people, but they - we - have something I need. I don't necessarily need a lot of it (although I can handle more than most), but I absolutely need it.

I've never had - we've never had to - go through something like this before, and it is slowly leaving a tidal stain of seaweeds and stranded, dying crabs for the seagulls to smash and eat on the rocks of delineations of pools of depression, shadows on the shore. The marks around the edges of the spaces where the thoughts and feelings cascade out of control - gently out of control, but out of control nonethe less get clearer and clearer the further off the remedy, the cure seems to recede.

My brain is slowly running low on compounds it cannot assemble on its own, at least one of the essential amino acids of life, of love, of laughter, is gradually being drained away, and when it is gone.

When it is gone, then what?

Into the plague, to breach the air, to drink the stained air full of laughter and noise and random outburts, occasional brilliance, interrupted with sublime instants of silence? Into the plague, to fuel the fire that trapped us thus?

I'm not sure how much of this stuff I can keep synthesizing. It seems to be holding up, but just barely. The homemade isn't the same quality as the real raw thing.

The cure has always been to be around people, and I paid my way by learning to be wanted to be around, for what it was worth. It replenishes and feeds, and I can then be further enriched by my time alone, by my deepened solitude, by the pleasure of solitude.

I have lost the pleasure of solitude.

10/21/20

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My "bubble" of compatibles is scattered across a planet or two and some very strange time zones (hello my morning NH people!). On a geographical basis they are too thin on the ground. I should have lived in a/the city, as has been suggested so many times.

Many, many people already had bubbles, that simply needed to be emphasized and delineated for health and safety. Those who did not, generally had their reasons for not having a small, close group they regularly spent time with.

Having that suggested as a solution - and I have been aware of this since April, if I hadn't thought of it in March - is actually a bigger problem or hurdle. How to fix the situation you've never encountered before? Do something unnatural you were unprepared for, to meet your basic personal social needs. It's one hell of a challenge, one I have not yet managed to wrap my head around.

Also the planning part is something that some of us would have to learn anew or for the first time. It's not trivial. Some of us did not have a lifeboat ready to navigate these seas in. But it is the solution for many. Some interpreted it ridiculously liberally, of course, by being a part of many "bubbles", and thus not really doing it at all. Others truly did create safe, secure, spaces to lock down their social lives in.

They really aren't the people hearing the fabric of space and time tearing slowly in the background.

10/21/20 1:45 AM

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[to a friend], being on "hold" for this long, and what may turn into a year and a half, is awful - I think at any age that is true, but at ours (I turned 60 last December), we are turning and confronting, deciding that we don't want to decline, but launch anew, with shifted expectations.

We have a long time to live and to give yet, and this pause and wait phase is just strange. It is not in the literature. It is not in the art. We must invent it, and under a peculiar form of duress. Not torture, but as I said in the intro, malnutrition.

Personally this presents as having work I need to do, not my "work", and not chores, but work on my self and who I am as I become who I will - work that requires I interact with others in order to promote and assess and continue the growth.

And in the meantime, as you say, we do not stand still. The slings and arrows, as they might be, are small, but they are relentless and they take their toll.

I do so much hope that we all come out of this stronger, and perhaps in some unforeseen ways richer.

I also hope that if I keep feeding this data into my brain, it will start to form more coherent picture of how we can better weather the winter and second half of this.

This isolation that spoils our solitudes.

10/22/20 4 AM

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"Someone to share things with" is a hard to come by luxury these days, it seems.

10/24/20 4 AM

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Some of us - the rare few - are doing all the work of translating for the many. It is as it should be. They grow the food.

10/22/20 4:30 AM

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I'm surprised when a day goes by that this [suicidal ideation] is not a component of my inner dialogue at some point, if not several.

It's exhausting just trying to chart a steady course, keep an even keel, through this bizarrely stilted world. This year much more than most.

10/29/20

Prior and later works. There may be more to add to this list if I ever sort through my notes (my "blank thoughts"). 5/14/21 Depression in Isolation Reflections on a year of mental cycles 10/29/20 Solitary confinement ...which is also late Oct pandemic notes (You Are Here) 10/5/20 Isolation and depression A rather raw piece about plague-driven depression 11/16/00 Periodic depression depression, my little black puppy...

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© Huw Powell
humanthoughts.org

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