Sixty-Eight Days
On October 8, 2020, we moved into our new house. We have not left since.
With the pandemic raging like wildfire through the U.S., we remain stuck inside. It's too cold to seek refuge in a tent in the woods, too pandemic-y to drive north to the mountains, too frigid to sit underneath the short burst of sunlight. Sixty-eight days, we both realize, is the longest, uninterrupted streak of being homebound since early childhood - or even, we think, ever. We are without business trips, vacations, weekend festivals, sleepovers, camp, or a drunken rendezvous to keep us from our beds.
When the stay-in-place orders rolled out on March 13, I feared being trapped inside would suffocate us and the light of our love would slowly fade. Day-after-day of witnessing me - all of me -seemed such a monumental task for any sane person. By March 13, we were barely two months into a beautiful romance that took years for us to realize. I was without work to blame my bad mood on, an office to hide my anxiety in, or concert venues to disguise my sullen, lackluster bouts of depression. He rarely saw me without perfectly contoured cheeks, shadowed eyes, mascaraed eyelashes, tailored skirts, and dry cleaner tops, let alone frazzled, insecure, or depressed. For years during our friendship, he only saw the perfectly capable, made-up, unfazed woman I permitted the world to see.
I am plain most days now. Hair in bun, chap sticked lips, naked nails, sweat pants, wool socks, and oversized beige knit sweater. Unable to hide beneath a layer of fashionable residue, I shed other disguises too. Bare to him are my frowns and crossed arms, sobs and anxiety, shame and self-loathing. Depression trots after me like a cloud on a breeze, and since I can no longer schedule my way out of myself, I must expose it, too, alongside my imperfect skin and uneven nails.
All the space and time the artist within has begged for, so have the darker, sadder parts of me. Waiting, waiting, waiting for space to breathe, to come out, to be seen. I've been too busy, I'll deal with it later, and now I'm here: with a canvas so broad and wide I didn't know where to begin.
We exit our companies and find ourselves purposeless of the first time ever. We begin to rise early, meditate, bend and stretch and flow. We start journaling daily; cry out years of held-back tears; let our laughter rumble through the house. (We buy a house.) One painting emerges from a smattering of brush strokes and colors under an autumn tree. He stumbles upon the beginning of an unknown novel and cooks risotto and stew. We take breaks for kisses in-between this and that.
Rather than being trapped, we find ourselves unexpectedly freed from the confines of our own projections - from the seductive expectations of the mirage we call society. Instead of rabid and feral inmates, we have become devotees to love, God, hope, and each other. While our purpose was once to best, our purpose is now to become our best. We sit in silence and continue an eternal conversation we began before time in every held glance. We don't always need words to express our growing love, just as we don't need a passport to explore the exotic coastlines of our innerscape.
While our purpose was once to best, our purpose is now to become our best.
It's a glorious practice of what being in love can be, an elegant journey inward, watching as the pretend and pretense of the world fade to the back leaving us with the remains of who we are, who we have always been.
We find joy and romance in the simple and small moments. Preparing dinner each night has become a ritual of discovery into the flavors of each vegetable, the varied heat of the pan, the chemistry that melds them together. We witness the transformation of the dishes we prepare - like magic, like science, like art - right before our eyes in awe and delight. For decades I didn't cook - and only on a rare occasion - and now we take turns alternating between executive and sous and serving us as our only customer. We sip warm coffee infused with mushrooms in the morning, dance hand-in-hand in the evening.
When he stands at the sink, enveloped with suds and a waterfall of warm water, his majestic form pulls at me and I'll wrap my arms around his warm, steady body, nuzzle against his back, and sync our breathing, inhaling the beauty of the present.
We read, we discuss, we ideate. We dream up visions of the future, ideas that will impact the world for the better, debate philosophy or perspective shared by an author, researcher, or speaker. We kiss, make love, and snuggle. We explore the depths of our emotional landscape when we can go nowhere else. And though these journeys are not photographable, they are the destinations no one else has dared to step foot. We have mastered arguments, projection, accountability. We adventure through sex, art, music, film, and coffee chats.
To the external eye, we have gone nowhere, seen no one. We live our life in a glass dome with confetti snow, and yet we have traveled deeper and beyond to the most exotic destinations the heart can conjure. We have fingered the edge of the Universe and felt it exhale and expand. We have done all of this sober, and with grace. We have written hundreds of pages for our books, though we do not know where the point ends. We keep going anyway.
That is true adventure: to tip toe inward without seeking an end. These are the feats we rarely scribble on our bucket lists. They are not fodder for social media, for making friends, for impressing or proving. They are deep, silent, tranquil moments found in the depth of ourself.
I often stand on the shore of my consciousness, staring into the expansive, infinite edge of my internal ocean. I trace my name in the ethereal sands and watch as the tide reclaims it one ebb at a time. I become more than my name in those moments, I become a drop in the depths of myself. I meander through the lush gardens blossoming with bright fuchsia tropical florals, wistful willow trees, crowds of deep, bright, and pale greens of unknown fauna. There is a dirt path I return to often, not to find the way out but to find my way further in. Perhaps this is what death is - not an exit, but an entrance. We spend so much of our lives looking outward - curating our profile, our physique, our resume. Death is a terrifying prospect to those of us that have yet to wander inward, yet to explore and map the places we love within us, yet to prospect the places we haven't fully uncover. When I sit in this garden, Jake is there. Our children. Our families. Our ancestors. Past and future fully present. It is not a place I go to for solitude - it is the place I return to remember who I am, and why I am here. We are my life's purpose. Even if we never leave this house, we will journey further than most.
I still long for an airplane ride, a warm beach, a hike upward through an unnamed mountain, a delicate plate of food prepared by the hands of a stranger I'll never meet. I long to dance wildly with dear friends, to meet up for a last minute coffee, to crowd around a stranger singing on the street. I long for it the way I long for summer, knowing it will return, and enjoying the winter thoroughly anyway.
