It was dark. 4:30 a.m.! I had just woken up early once again. Unable to sleep through a whole night. But at least I slept, a small part of me whispered.
It was Phase Three or Four of Covid-19. If it were a Star Wars film it would be called something cheesy like: “Attack of the Variants”! But it wasn’t. It was merely real life. And I plus everyone I knew was over it, but unfortunately it was not over us. Or at least that’s what our Government had decided. There were so many things coming out from the Government - reports and predictions and status updates - that just seemed too surreal to be true. That didn’t gibe with what I was hearing from other quarters. Like that our hospital ICU wards were jam packed and patients were being flown to hospitals far and wide. A friend of mine had just had an non-Covid-19 emergency recently and he said that the hospital he went to, one of the biggest in the City and the Province, seemed eerily empty.
And then there were all the stark warnings and statistical probabilities the Government was publishing. These too seemed wrong at least when I loooked out on the population at large. All I could see were swarmming masses of Milennials wandering around on the streets and in the parks -- and all of them maskless: laughing, carrying on with friends and generally looking unconcerned and having a good time.
But not me. I had grown deeply sullen and depressed. Despondent really. I figured I was only another lockdown away from near catatonic. A state that seemed almost alluring to the semi-dead state I was currently occupying. At least I would be oblivious I thought to myself. Slim pickings that represented. Had I somehow missed the punchline. Was I the only one who’d not read the memo that said this was all a grand charade. One that I didn’t even have to pay mind to or even try to pretend was real anymore?
It was thus I found myself at the beginning of a new week in a new month facing a new monster called me, myself and I. Alone in the City I once called home. Alone at almost 5:00 a.m. with no one to talk to. No one to share these thoughts with. No one to question whether this was their reality or just mine. Alone to think too much and too little all at the same time.