I went outside this morning. It was cold, grey, misty. A quietness over the Sunday morning lull of Sabbeth slowness. Stepping out of the door, I wandered the hilly streets of a small communter town south of the big smoke. Sticking to the path, for the mud was everywhere after yesterday’s shower rainfall. I knew I had a virus inside me. The tests this morning, and the day before, and the day before that, had proved it. It’s why I was up so early, to feel the air in my beaten lungs before the world awoke around me. The moral compass of being outside with others struck me like a dagger to the stomach; my humanity to strangers allowed me to cross the road whenever I saw another soul on the path ahead towards me.
Was I therefore, a virus? The desire to connect to another human being even through passing so swiftly was there, after days inside. I would gain little from the moment. Perhaps a smile at best, but likely just a small gesture of space to allow both of us to cross towards our onward journies. I felt like a virus. I felt like I was a parasite looking to infect the next breathing organism. Every time I touched something, it was like the object was burning. I could almost see the virus spreading as I lifted my hand away from a door handle. It felt as though my whole body had metamorphosed into a Kafka-esque novel; the beetle that everyone despised and hated more and more by the day.
What is it, to be human? I know I’m nowhere near the first, nor the last, to ponder this deep existential rhetoric, but microcosm personal moments coupled with huge world-changing narratives have allowed me to reflect for the first time since I came up for air from my new job (which is wonderful, and for another day).
This feeling of physically having to disconnect from others became even more poignant with loved ones. My father had come off his bike on a road close to home; nothing serious, just a chain breaking that caused him to come to quite an immediate halt on the road. My phone buzzed “Garmin device detected and incident. You are listed as an emergency contact”. In that moment my heart skipped a beat with fear. A particular song lyric popped into my head “all your heroes are dead”. I thought he might be seriously injured. I thought of all the things that would mean. Within seconds I was waiting for Godot. Until the text came through, “I’m ok, chain broken”. You breathe as if your body has been under water all that time. A huge sigh as if a balloon had been released. Deflated relief. I take him home with the windows open in the car and him wearing a face mask. We don’t hug, just say goodbye with a “see you next week”. Half an hour ago he was, in my irrational fear, dead and gone in a freak bike accident and I had started considering my life without my hero. Now he was wheeling a bike into the garage without a backwards glance and I was driving away, the moment passed. But humanity had struck again; I saw it for what it was. Fleeting, painful, agonising — but always with hope.
My partner and I have been unable to give each other a hug since I had the positive test. While on reflection now he has had one too, this was fairly pointless as has just delayed the inevitable, for the days we slept separately in different rooms as though a huge cloud hung over us. We didn’t hug, didn’t kiss, didn’t touch or hold hands walking up to town for our daily coffee. We ate together, but without supporting each other to make the meals and no touching of each other’s plates. No cups of tea provided with an afternoon snack. No sharing packets of chocolate buttons and haribo on a Saturday evening. It felt as though we had emotionally disconnected; we knew we were there, but the inability to act stifled our humanity to each other. The day he got his positive test we embraced in a “covid-hug” and laughed at two parasites connected together in harmony. It had felt like a long time since we had done that.
He has been watching the news a lot too. He called it ‘history happening in front of our eyes’. He’s right, of course, it is. But so is every day of our lives. I’m not sure I want to live out this part of history in such vivid detail. Perhaps that’s my way of denying the frailty of human existence. But in my passing of Sky News, a few quotes that I picked up along the way have stuck with me.
‘WORLD WAR THREE — IS IT ALREADY HAPPENING’
‘PUTIN DEMANDS TO STOP WAR’
‘UKRAINE WAR WILL LAST MONTHS IF NOT YEARS’
‘BOMBS HEARD OVERNIGHT NEAR KYIV’
I listen to the language with fear and loathing. Bomb. Demand. War. War Crime. SANCTION. Masculine inadequacy driving inhumanity for power. After the last two years of loss, the disconnection from loved ones around us, the inability to be truly free across the world, you’d like to think we’d learned something about the importance of freedom, hope, love, humanity. The daily grind of battling with the elements of the world slowly crumbling around us. As if we can’t find the way out. The virus is spreading beyond the parasite it began and it makes me feel all the more unhuman for it.
A parasite inside me. A parasite around me. A parasite in the world.
Is this really what we are all here for? To hide from viruses that hurt us? To not connect to for fear of retribution? When all the while the world destroys itself, virus or no virus, for land, for power, for small-man syndrome (I jest, but I am angry and sad and dark humor is the only way out). My own humanity has been questioned through my disconnection to everything I love.
The words as I type are struggling to be found. Beyond sadness. The emotion is deeper and more profound. Fragments of hope; trying to piece them back together with sticking tape.
What is humanity today? I’m not sure I can remember it.
