Day Zero
Yes. There is a day zero when you are self-isolating. They don’t start counting the 10 days until the day after you disembark from the plane.
A shame if you ask me. A shame and a waste of days to count.
After spending 3 hours standing on the line at the immigration control, Mr Y collects us and drives us home. Home for the next 10 days is my Aunt’s place where I happened to have stayed during my last visit here.
I’m too tired to sleep during the ride home.
I’m neither excited nor melancholic.
It just feels like doing something routine.
I’m grateful to be here, especially on the terms that comes with this visit. I’m happy because this is basically a dream come true. A dream that has been a long time coming, given the interesting events that went on last year.
We head to the grocery store, to pick up all the food we would require for the ten days period. The shopping is good too. It feels like clockwork. Has it really only been 6 months sinsce I last entered Tesco?
Once inside, the smell of fabric freshener is the first thing my senses register, and boy, it feels so familiar. Familiar and refreshing.
Familiar enough to make my eyes sting as my emotions finally catch up to me. I’ve missed this place since the six months that I have been here last.
It’s good to know that I’m here to stay and not just as a tourist.
I will make a home here and even more memories. I take a moment to collect myself before I start collecting all the junk I love to indulge in from the shelves.
Did I really go grocery shopping or am I dreaming it?
I don’t really know for sure.
Anyway, I’m vaguely aware of everything else around me as I toss and turn on my tiny bouncy bed. What is it with the British and small houses and hefty tax?
Day Three.
I’ve read novels and gotten tired.
I’ve scrolled the streets of Instagram and ridden the elevators of my WhatsApp up and down.
I’ve set targets and journaled my goals.
I’ve watched movies and even completed a series on Netflix – a good one by the way.
I’ve slept, and dreamt, and crashed, and died and resurrected.
I’ve eaten, binged, drank and snacked.
I’ve played music, danced and prayed.
I’ve called my friends and then stalked my emails.
And it is only 5 pm.
There’s still 7 hours before day 4 and then, there would be all the days left in this prison sentence until day 10.
This is unfair at this point.
I mean, what on God’s green earth justifies why I have to continue in quarantine when I’ve already had two negative PCR tests? I can understand if they are worried that the test I did at home is not up to their standards. But then, the test I took on day 2 came out negative and it was done by one of their accredited labs. Why do I still have to stay indoors, isolated from the world for another 8 days and still do another test?
What virus am I going to contract after day 2? It’s unfair if you ask me, and yes you have asked me because you are reading my journal. Maybe I should step out and take a breath of fresh air. Just a tiny, weensy, uncontaminated breath of fresh air on the outside. I’m thinking, surely that would not hurt. I lie down and force myself to sleep and only end up tossing and turning and tossing yet again.
Sometimes around 9 pm, I get up, change my skirt into black trousers and prepare to step outside to get fresh air. I go to pick up my phone and earpiece and find my mom in the sitting area watching movies. She asks where I heading to, and I respond, telling her that I need fresh air and would love to take a walk for a bit on the street.
She gives me her signature eye and says, ‘Don’t go. My friends have been calling me to warn me to stay indoors. They say the officials do random spot checks and may have specially installed hidden CCTV on the streets to monitor us”.
Hmm. My inner goddess pouts.
Mummy, hmmm !!!
For reals.
CCTV!.
I roll my eyes internally, instantly regretting that I came up to pick up my phone in the first place. Why does she have to jinx it with all this superstitious talk.
I mean, will Uncle Borris really tell his boys to be spying on me with special CCTV or to come and look for me at 9pm.
I roll my eyes again and collapse downcast into the ottoman by the window. I’m not one to disregard her warning. I feel like I have this luck where once someone says “so so so” before I do something bad, then it would come to pass and be jinxed, even if others get away with it.
This essentially takes all the fun out of whatever the action that “so so so” would have been and my taking this walk falls under that category. Now that she has spoken, a part of me just knows that she has jinxed it.
I change from my sitting posture on the ottoman into a kneeling posture and I look longingly outside. The streets, from my point of view, look so serene and quiet and lonely. Like it’s missing me. Like it’s beckoning to me.
They also look devoid of human life, as though suffering from the prolonged state of lockdown that this city has been in for the major part of the last year. The streets are calling to me and I’m here kneeling and just looking. Unbelievable! Can my simple 5 minutes intended walk really be jinxed by spot checks?
My mom gets up from the living room and heads to the room, possibly to sleep. As she goes, it occurs to me that she is also in this isolation with me and must be feeling the effects of the confinement just as I am, perhaps even more, although she has not complained as much. She must relate to my frustration in some way and if she really does relate, then she won’t want to kill my joy by jinxing my harmless idea. Right?
I return to a sitting position as my knees are hurting and my toes are tingling. I pick up the remote, shuffle pointlessly through Netflix, conclude that everything there is of little interest to me, turn off the Tv altogether and then return to binging on blueberries.