#2

COVID has made me a Third Party in my own Narrative.

By Sid Watson

Illustrations by @rubywarnerillustration

This year, particularly in lockdown, I have often felt as if I’m not truly existing. Life feels vaguely surreal: almost normal, but just a fraction off. Enough to make one unsettled, to question the reality of things. When I do things I feel like I’m participating, but they go by too quickly; suddenly they’re over and I can’t remember what really happened, if it really happened. Is this covid? Is this the new me? I am enjoying myself but in a kind of sped up way, like a movie played at twice its usual speed: I’ll like a scene but before I know it the next one is occurring, all the while I’m still trying to grasp at the past.

“stop letting life live us, and start living our lives”

I think that’s the issue. I’m constantly either looking forward to things that will happen, or trying to memorialise things that have already come to pass, rather than living in the moment, day by day. Because its harder to face the emptiness of a locked-down day and try to enjoy it, than it is to live in the future or past. But that difficulty is one I, and arguably all of us, must face, because until we do we are allowing life to live us, and by doing so I fear this year will become a sink hole in our life - a time which we (perhaps wilfully) dis-remember.

This collective forgetting probably sounds appealing to many of us; indeed I myself am looking forward to a time when I don’t have to think about the legality of seeing my friends, or the safety of returning to university, and can move past this unfathomably difficult time. But as much as I would like to forget, move on and get back to my “normal” life, there’s no denying that this year is happening now. I worry that detaching from this reality, living in the future and waiting for the world to come to us, will not only leave us with a year-long gap in our lives, but will institute a habit of never living in or appreciating the moment. We need to retake the reigns - stop letting life live us, and start living our lives. Of course there are limitations placed on the scope of our autonomy by the pandemic, but there is still some independence within that, and we need to grasp it like our life depends on it. Go for a walk; watch the sunset, make a fancy dinner and pretend you’re in Paris eating dinner by the Seine, play with your dog, dance in the rain, anything! Do something you love, something that will make you smile and realise again what a miracle it is to be alive at this moment, walking this earth. It won’t nearly compensate for what we have lost but in my experience, it will return to us a small amount of lust for life just as it is, rather than how it was or how it might be. And that, I believe, is something we could all use some more of right now.