i think i miss quarantine

This won’t be a popular opinion, but as I sit in my bed on

Friday night, I can’t help but miss the spring of 2020. For

the first time in my life, I was allowed to put a pause on everything. While the world I knew was falling apart, I was

sitting in my childhood bed, watching coming of age movies

until 6 a.m. every single day. My normal routine of waking

up, school, work, socializing, and homework had paused. My

new routine was non-existent. I loved it.

I was home in Southern Oregon, a rural area where Covid-19

cases were pretty rare in the beginning, so getting Covid

didn’t feel like a huge concern back then. I was just back

in my hometown, blowing bubbles in my backyard with my

dogs.

Of course it’s a little fucked up that while a global pandemic

was going on, I was able to just sit in my room and watch

movies. According to the CDC, that was my part in the war

effort of fighting Covid-19, but it’s hard to describe what I

I remember having rough and sad days, listening to

“Somebody That I Used To Know” on repeat in my family’s

garage while smoking out of my favorite bong.

People really enjoyed taking on hobbies during shelter in

place, but, as hard as I try, I’ve never been much of a hobbyist

(despite the $160 I spent at a craft store) and I never picked

one up. What I did do was catch up on years of sleep. Mostly,

I found myself in an introspective state. I started going on late

night drives through my small town, driving past the parking

lots where I would hang out with my friends, the coffee shops we would go to, the viewpoints where I had some of my first sexual experiences. I was back in a place where I had never

before been content... except this time, I was.

I think quarantine was the time I needed to finally appreciate and understand my childhood and where I came from; a

small town riddled with a meth problem. Everyone from a

meth town has a story about it. My token story is about my

my brother and I down. I vividly remember my dad saying he

had “an addiction to addictions.” I didn’t find out what that addiction was until months later. I don’t know why he didn’t

just rip the bandaid off– his delivery was so confusing. He said he was going to be gone for just a few months. I remained

calm. I knew so little about what was going on, I didn’t know

what to think or how to feel. Most of what’s left of that time

is this strong feeling of confusion.

When my dad came back, everything went back to normal.

It hadn’t felt that different when he was gone, really. Growing up, my dad had always lived in the same house as us, but it

never felt like he was really there. He worked insane hours

at the restaurant he owned, coming back home at 3 am and

leaving long before I was up. I’m not sure when the transition

happened from him working late hours to doing meth during

those hours. I barely even have a clear memory of him before

he went to rehab.

I do remember the night he was arrested. It was a couple

months after he had gotten back from rehab trip number

one. My mom had been gone from the house for a while, and

I was working on pre-calculus homework in my room. When

my mom and her friend got back, they immediately came

to my room. I didn’t think twice about it. But then my mom

told me that he had been arrested. He got pulled over leaving

a meth house, and he’d had guns in his car. I remember still

trying to finish my pre-calculus homework, and being unable to.

We went over to my aunt’s house that night, and my mom

finally got a call from my dad. But he never came back home. After he was released, he walked to a motel and stayed there

until he went down to the Betty Ford in Palm Springs. While

he was gone, my mom asked me to write a letter to him. I

think it was some sort of rehab therapy assignment. I don’t

recall what I put in the letter, except that I feared that I would

become like him. He wrote me a letter back saying that he

didn’t think that would happen.

When he came back from California, he was almost a whole

new person. I think that that was when my dad and I’s

relationship really began. And I’m thankful for quarantine

because it ended up being the extra time we needed to build

our relationship.

Quarantine became a time for me to examine the people

and places that defined my childhood. I wasn’t regressing, I was appreciating the things that defined who I am. I miss being able to have that type of time to just sit and think,

even when the thoughts become sad. Sometimes it’s nice to

be able to sit in my sadness. I realized I was always looking

for a distraction from my thoughts, and quarantine left me

with no distractions. I was finally able to piece together my past– to heal myself not because I was broken, but because I finally had the time to.

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