Week 34 - What's on your mind, Ellie?

Edited BY

 

G P Kennedy

 

 This week we take a break from regular reporting of life during Coronavirus. We are giving our Storytellers an opportunity to express themselves and blow off a little steam by asking the question, What's on your mind? There are no rules or limitations to Storytellers' responses - they are free to write, well, whatever is on their minds.


Ellie - Milan, Italy


When the pandemic started, I had reached a threshold of irritation about physical human contact.


Just plain old bumping into people had become unbearable after months spent in crowded trains and, worse, people running to their supposed exits or platforms in the Milan subway.

Perhaps that was on my mind because it's a topic I am researching.


I was out and about all the time and the lack of bodily distance was overwhelming. Now, the impossibility to connect with the world - the world at an intimate level of perception is what bothers me the most.


I haven't seen family and friends in a long time and the distance makes it hard to understand them: what is going on with them? How do I decipher their digital silence, for example?

 


Even in normal times, connecting with family is challenging because of the geographic distance that separates us.


While I have definitely come to appreciate the existence of Zoom, the lack of presence and touch has been the greatest discomfort in the last months. 

 



With the unpredictability of events, I tend to over-interpret words.


I also fear that things are not shared with me so as not to worry me.


Even before insomnia was listed as one of the aftereffects of COVID-19, the possibility of contagion, not for me but for my loved ones, was the constant red light in my mind.

 





The distance has also given me a new insight into uncertainty.


I am thinking about life as a soap opera, or a series of unexpected events, that people want to believe it's predictable just because that makes it more bearable.

If life has been behaving this way, it's actually sheer luck and chance.

Most of the time life is unpredictable. If we manage to disassociate ourselves from its worries, it can look like an adventure to be dealt with.


Uncertainty is actually excitement: an opportunity to have a different experience. This certainly sounds like something easy to say, and I know that's a safe moment to say it. But I hope to keep it in my mind a little longer, for when I might really need it.

 

 


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