Coming out of the tunnel

LONELINESS AND APOCALYPTIC MOVIES ARE MOTIVATORS FOR CHANGE IN THE AGE OF COVID-19.

IT WAS LATE FEBRUARY AND MY INNER GERMO-PHOBE HAD MAXED OUT ITS CAPACITY FOR TOLERATING PEOPLE. I HAD BEEN FOLLOWING THE DEVELOPMENTS OF THIS MYSTERIOUS DISEASE SINCE THE NEW YEAR. I ONLY SAW IT COMING BECAUSE I’VE HAD A LIFELONG FASCINATION OF ‘APOCALYPTIC’ MOVIES. CONTAGION, WATERWORLD, 12 MONKEYS, THE MATRIX, 28 DAYS LATER, ELYSIUM. YOU NAME IT, I’VE SEEN IT.

With a healthy dose of realistic pessimism and a chronic lung condition, I shamelessly horded food, household supplies, medications and went into isolation. After talking about end of days scenarios my entire life, I felt prepared and ready to bear witness to this global calamity. But nothing prepared me for the smash of heartbreak, grief, regret, and selfhatred in my hours of loneliness.

There has been plenty of talk about how bad loneliness is, but there has been little talk of how loneliness reveals the unaddressed wounds of our life’s that need healing. I was so heartbroken from the end of a relationship that I had put off dealing it with it for years.

Heartbreak is the real human experience of intense emotional stress or pain; it can literally feel like your heart is being ripped from your chest. And I can promise you, if you’ve got a good dose, you’ll truly know what love is.

I’ve had more than my fair share of lovers, but I knew from day one that the connection with this particular love was going to stay with me forever. The brutal honesty of my loneliness made my responsibility for my part in the split, feel ten times harder. My heartbreak churned grief and regret into a ball of bleak self-hatred, as I was left with only myself to blame. Being stuck in isolation there was no way out of these feelings, only a way through.

With my chest feeling unbearably split open, I did what we should all do in our hours of darkness; I rang my wisest friend and she gave me six pieces of advice:

Don’t rest in the past. Remember what sucked. It is ok to feel feelings, but not become them. Be healthy as you can be. There will always be a future and be ready for the next opportunity. Watch one of your favorite movies.

She was right. I’d been spinning my wheels in the past, crying about the ‘could have’s’ and ‘should haves’, while obsessively idealizing the other person. The fact of the matter was there was a reason we broke up and I needed to remember that. I also had that moment of being honest that all my little soothing vices like comfort food, drug use and porn, had become staples of everyday life, way before COVID-19 was a thing. Sure, I was successful, but I did have a patch work of habits that I was using to tranquillize the heavy emotional baggage eating away at me. Although painful, the enforced isolation made me deal with and

The short answer was no. If my measure of success for getting through the day was to only need one joint, rub 3 out (without feeling like a soulless bastard) and only have two potato cakes, then that wasn’t what I would call success or ready for a future.

I decided that I was going honor my feelings and learn from them, but not live there. After a long walk, some good food and a hot cup of milo, I settled down to watch Mad Max: Fury Road, because, in fact there’s a really good reason why ‘apocalyptic’ movies are so popular; they represent our subconscious desire for change. Before COVID-19, all of us in some way wanted the world to change and there was an ever-present feeling that we were on a destructive path. Apocalyptic movies sooth our discomfort with the way things are. They empower us to imagine ways of dealing with drama, while envisioning new societies, with themes of what is good and what is evil. Loneliness is not just a feeling of isolation; it is a motivator for change.

Twitter @RandosJackalas