A loner’s voice in quarantine

ROSE: I’ve been living under a rock throughout this quarantine period. I can’t bear to watch the news anymore.

Is it okay to go home to my family now?

JACK: You can. Wait, can you?

ROSE: I think a travel pass is required.

JACK: Oh, you mean a travel authority from your barangay.

ROSE: But I’m scared. I might be asymptomatic. I might be the one to bring the virus home and infect my family. I’m really that paranoid.

JACK: Yeah, you’re right. There are so many stories on that now — those who had a haircut, etc., who were asymptomatic, or those stay-out househelpers who unwittingly infected the whole family.

Sorry if I scared you even more. Hahaha.

ROSE: Waaaah. I super miss my family!

JACK: Awww, I’m so sorry. You’re like an OFW now.

ROSE: At least those OFWs are able to go out. Me? I can only look out the window. Sigh. This will pass.

JACK: Oh, I envy you. You have so much alone time! Lol

ROSE: Too much alone time. Not good anymore. I need human interaction.

JACK: I can’t imagine how you feel. Are you extro or intro?

ROSE: I can’t imagine it myself, either.

I’m more intro. I’m okay with intimate or small groups. I can fake it, though, especially if it’s for work. Lol

JACK: Haha. They say that most intros are the ones who survive this quarantine situation. With my kids, Princess is more intro, and Prince is more outro. Ironically, though, Princess is the one acting out. She can’t stand being locked in. Prince, on the other hand, seems to be enjoying the situation. He just keeps playing.

ROSE: Intros prefer to be alone in a crowd, but we don’t want to be lonely, either. We love spaces, big wide spaces where our minds can fly.

I think Prince is enjoying himself because he’s discovering the newness of the feeling and experience of being locked in.

JACK: Hmmm, maybe.

ROSE: Princess, like me, might want to see movement. To observe. To stop, look, and listen, as the railroad signage says.

Look at what happened to me in the office. Even when I was moved to a noisy and busy area, I was okay. You guys needed to pull me out of my desk to join in the fun. But most of the time, I just listen and observe you guys from my dark corner. Haha.

JACK: Oh, that’s right! You know, it would be great if you could document your lockdown experience.

ROSE: The experience itself is boring. What goes on in my head is confusing. Lol

JACK: It would be fun to look back at that!

ROSE: Maybe. I actually started writing things down already, but I never finished them.

JACK: Awww.

One thought on “A loner’s voice in quarantine

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s