Here's How I Survive Sheltering in Place by Neha Bhattacharya

    As time moves in circles on the clock, whipping and foaming each moment into sticky molasses, sheltering in place feels like solidifying in the unsettling churn of everyday silence. Ennui sits heavy on my chest especially when four walls are the only things real enough to be touched and felt. This unwarranted stillness often amplifies the disquiet in my head; it breathes life into my anxieties and insecurities and then hands them a power bar. In my self-loathing pity-party, almost daily do I meet these newly animate foes. They dip their slimy fingers into the sticky gelatinous quarantine-day and swirl it around absentmindedly as they belch out their unsolicited opinions about just how badly I am. After hours of catering to the needs of my guests, at dusk, fatigued, I fall into a post-party stupor while my foes quietly glide away promising to come back at the very crack of dawn. On some days they come back in fewer numbers. Once in a while, they leave me alone as they go after a juicer catch. On such days I spend my time stealing moments and things that sustain me when the pity-party resumes again. In the hope of helping my readers weather their own internal pity-party, I am sharing below a list of what my stolen gems of sustenance comprise of: 

1. Letters:

I write to my people. To them I recount every doubt and insecurity; I spell out every anxiety in words and then seal them in little envelopes of love. Like me, write them love letters and make them all about you. Spell out every ounce of self-doubt, heartbreak, and rage in the letters. Each letter is an airtight coffin. Send them forth to the people you love. As they open and read them again, each heartbreak, each anxiety will get its well-deserved burial. No, they do not have to be quintessential post-cards or even paper. Write emails, for all I care. Between yearning for the good old postable letters and romanticizing the heck out of them, we all forget how absolutely like an undemanding lover the e-mails are. They come with no baggage and they don't expect you to romance them to death. So write, write, write, until you sand off the tip of your pen, your fingers, and with that your loneliness.

2. Sun and Grass:

I photosynthesize. I wander in the sun until my feet are sore and there’s nowhere else left to go. Whenever there’s too much darkness inside of you, try going out in the sun and soaking up as much light as you can. Come back only when the hollow of your chest fills up with the warm sunny glow. Roll around in the grass. Hold each blade of grass up against the sun and watch it wilt away. Who knows, we might end up finding the moon as we sit around trying to stitch the world out of grass.

3. Tea:

When there’s no sun shining outside, I brew myself my personal cup of sunshine. A cup of liquid yellow warmth helps when the blood runs cold and the heart frosts up. Isolation feels a little bearable when there is a warm cup between your palms and a toasty blanket around your weary little toes. Drink up the flavours, the fragrances for they remind you of the reasons to keep pushing ahead; for they bring to you the seven colours and the five elements in a cup when you cannot go seeking them out yourself. Weathering an apocalypse is hard. It is harder when we are expected to do it alone. You cannot expect your anxieties to never turn up at your pity-party for they most definitely will. All-day, every day. All we can do is to keep on collecting these stolen gems of joy.

Go on, look for yours. Don’t worry, you’ll survive.