People have been asking me since I booked my flights in October if I was excited about going home.
No, I told them, I’ll be excited once I’m out of isolation. There were too many things that could’ve gone wrong. 2020 pummelled any expectations I might once have had that I would make a plan and then things would go according to that plan.
Well, freedom is nearly palpable. I have been dancing around my room like a lunatic for the last 24 hours – including a little chair dance!
Isolation wasn’t all bad – here is my official review:
Best things
- Time to catch up on all those books, to write, to catch up with friends (virtually), for a bit of healthy introspection
- Magical unlimited supply of tasty food
- Guest services – so helpful! When I cut my hand on a butter knife, they were very prompt with sending plasters up
- Gloriously comfy bed
- Nightly baths
- Spunky army guys around for eye candy
- Gifts from the Hotel
- Friends coming to visit (IRL) – even though it’s probably super lame for them, it meant heaps to me.
- Exercise!
Worst things about iso
- Cabin fever
- Lack of sleep
- Difficult to move enough to get tired
- Covid tests
- General low grade antsiness
- Perpetually feeling slightly zombie-ish
- Lack of self-determination
- Get a little sick of trying to jolly one’s self along
But isolation is over, I have cleaned every surface of the place, and nearly successfully gotten the bath bomb stains off the bathtub – it slightly looks like I’ve slain a unicorn in there.
What do I want to do with my freedom??
- Hug people guilt-free
- Get a haircut
- Get a massage
- Go to the dentist
- Have an in-person doctor’s appointment
- Go out for meals
- Go shopping and be able to try stuff on
- Go dancing
- Go to a concert
- Go to the movies
- Get hokey pokey ice cream in a cone
- Work without a mask on
- See my mum for the first time in 2 years
- But very most of all: Swim in the ocean and have it not be horridly freezing
Basic, right?
It has been a very long two years.
My last hair cut was in July, when I convinced a 7 year old to give me a trim. Hairdressers were open for 3 months or so between lockdowns, but it fell into the category of a nice-to-have, not a must-have, and therefore maybe not worth risking my life to make it happen.
I picked up a second job in December not for the money, but to try and adequately people myself. I was wearing a mask for 12 hours a day, bussing from home to school to the shop, then home again. Because I didn’t catch Covid from that, I can say that it was worth the risk. I might tell that story differently if I’d caught it, then accidentally passed Covid on to Jared, my flatmate or my colleagues.
The last time I went to a movie, we had to be socially distanced within the theatre and wear a mask the whole time. No snacks allowed. Cinemas wereonly open for a month.
Jared and I had signed up to dance classes that were due to start the Monday after St Paddy’s day. Dancing in our lounge has been fun, but a poor substitute.
It is the most basic things that I have missed.
Sure, we’ve managed to make it through 2020 healthy, well and still employed. We have so much to be grateful for. It could’ve been so very much worse. We’ve avoided the worst of it.
But it has been a very long time to go without a lot of joy, without freedom, without adventure. A year of denying one’s basic impulses, for fear they might inadvertently sicken – or worse – yourself or someone else, is a long time.
I am utterly grateful to have such a haven to come back to. It is so nice to be able to escape the lockdowns, lack of fun, uncertainty of work, constant fear of sickness and death, that is consuming Ireland at the moment. Escaping Irish winter in exchange for Kiwi summer is also a delightful bonus. It is nice to have the freedom to be my crazy extrovert self again.
I am really truly so thankful that such a place exists, and that I can come back.
Perhaps, like the song goes, we don’t know how lucky we are.
I do know exactly how lucky I am, and will be grateful for each minute of Covid-free bliss.
