I’m in Madrid, in my fourth year of university. Suddenly classes are canceled. No reason to stay all alone in the hostile capital city. Then, the chatter begins: Evil Students from Madrid Spread the Virus All Across Spanish Countryside (how true was this? We’ll never know. But HOW evil the youth was).
It got me thinking about my hometown, aka yet-another-remote-village no one really cares about. Average age of the population: 80-90. Also, barely a handful of inhabitants.
I look at myself in the mirror and see a mustache and a scowl beginning to grow on my face: the unmistakable features of a genocidaire. And I do not want to go down in the annals of history as the-millenial-who-exterminated-a-whole-village-armed-just-with-a-virus.
"It'll be fine, it's only going to be for two weeks, just imagine HOW MUCH I'm going to enjoy having the whole apartment to myself, not having to be there to smell it when you cook your stinky fish," I tell one of my flatmates as he packs his bags to go home and begs me to go back to mine too. My other roommate leaves a few days later, same dark omen. "What if it's not two weeks?". But how on earth could it not be two weeks (spoiler alert: it wasn’t).
In total, I spent 70 days in isolation, all by myself. Taking advantage of my imposed solitude, I filled my whole neighborhood with handmade posters, offering to babysit the children of families who had to work (when schools closed but quarantine had not yet been imposed). Then, I offered to do grocery shopping for Covid-infected people who couldn’t get around. I think that was the moment I realized that things were starting to get really bad.
I did groceries for a woman who had just lost her job as she fell ill with Covid (she was a cleaner, no formal job contract). She had no money left and had to quarantine for at least two weeks. She only asked me to bring her two cans of tuna fish. Again: Things. Getting. Really bad.
A tweet in which I asked for volunteers to mobilize the youth to help with this situation became viral. A couple of TV stations even ended up interviewing me. I tried to explain that our situation was very privileged, that we were filling a gap in the system that should be taken care of by the State. That we had no training, that things could become even more dangerous and that we were only doing it temporarily until the authorities got back on their feet and got their act together. As you can probably imagine, nobody ever saw that part of the interview because TV stations decided not to broadcast it. Instead, they showed a cute sentence about the need to help each other. Solidarity is interesting. Its political dimension, I guess, not so much.
So not bad: instead of going down in history as the gen-z pandemic genocidaire, I was actually starting to become more of a Mother Teresa. Thus far, everything was going (relatively) well. Until it wasn’t.
On March 14, the official national quarantine was announced. I was completely alone. The first solid memory I have from those times is uninstalling Instagram, once I realized some people were actually having a good time (very compassionate, I know, sue me). The next thing I did was turn off the TV for the following 70 days and switch to radio (I couldn't stand the sight of the coffins nor the TV hosts, to be honest). I stopped replying to texts, stopped volunteering, stopped helping. Au revoir Mother Teresa.
The first “into-the-wild” moment I remember is going to the pharmacy to buy face masks, after a month in isolation. The pharmacist looked at me as if I had been living in a cave (which, I mean, close enough): "the masks sold out in the first week, we’ve been out of stock for a month". Alas.
The lockdown was quite strict in Spain. For 70 days, I only went out for 15 minutes every two weeks to take care of my groceries. I remember sweating every time I saw the queue around the supermarket and being short of breath as I placed the items from the checkout counter into my backpack, in case it took too long. One day, the cashier (I always went to the same one, trying to use some familiar-face comfort) told me there was no rush and I could take all my time. It is still one of my best memories from those days.
I had the smallest room in my apartment and I wasn’t able to move into my housemate’s double-bed, despite their trying. I still don't know why. I also carried a daily notebook back then, but I haven’t been able to open it since.
My lockdown also came with great epitomizing moments such as breaking a tooth in two, buying a bottle of cheap wine and finishing it in less than an hour for my 22nd birthday in what used-to-be a cereal bowl, and bursting into tears that same afternoon when my 4 remaining friends in town gathered in their Covid uniform (mask, gloves, paralyzing fear) to wish me a happy birthday from a distance. 50 days have passed in which I have not seen any familiar faces except through a screen (besides the cashier lady).
It took me years to use public transportation again without having panic attacks. Whenever my friends brought up “that Instagram trend we used to dance to during Covid” I froze. And no one really asks me about it because it’s too weird to talk about (Not to mention all the “you were so brave” and “I could have never done what you did” comments).
Today, and after a lot of help from my friends and family, I can laugh about it (a bit). It even comes in handy whenever I need an excuse to blame all my issues on. But I also know I will eventually have to face all of this with the help of a professional. It didn’t “teach me” anything. It didn’t “make me stronger” (if anything, quite the opposite). Three years later I’m still recovering from Covid in many ways, and that’s okay. If you also are, now you know you’re not alone.
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