1 week since I washed my hair. 5 weeks since I last saw someone in person that I knew. 9 weeks since I last wore makeup. 11 weeks since I last sat in a restaurant. 12 weeks since I last hugged and kissed my best friends.

I’ve always been a sucker for a good streak. Give me a good habit I should start. If there’s a way that I can make it rinse-repeatable, and give myself a daily gold star for accomplishing it, well shit, I’m in.

The other side of that coin is also true: I track how long it’s been since I’ve done a thing. Obsessively. I might do it to see how long I can go for the reward of it (“Yay, no alcohol for a month!”). I might do it to deny myself the reward for the sake of accomplishing a bigger goal (“Just one more chore…”). These days, I find a cold comfort in just seeing how long it’s been since I did X utterly normal thing that I loved. Poking the bruise. Reminding myself of the pain, the sorrow of these chunks of normality that are gone now.

It’s a universal trauma that we’re all in the midst of now, yes, but that doesn’t mean that our experience is one and the same. I’m allowed to grieve the things I need to grieve, and of all the things I give myself an unbearable amount of shit for, this is not it. I’m allowed to feel sad over how small my life is today in the same way that I allowed myself to feel sad over my small life 13 weeks ago. But at least then I could reach out and find at least one friend willing to pop out and grab a drink with me at some delightful watering hole.

Last year, I had foot surgery with less than a month’s notice. I knew going into it that I would be laid up for a while: homebound for weeks, and then slowed and clumsified by a removable cast and the process of relearning how to walk. It was a short exit from real life amongst other humans outside my own house, and then a slow re-entry. It took far longer than expected to get back to normal, and felt even longer on my inside clock than the time which actually passed. But ultimately, it was all me. My body healing, my discipline to take the steps I needed to take to regain motility and strength.

Today is familiar in that I know how to exist entirely within my own walls. I’m not tied to the couch (nor, thankfully, in need of frozen peas to keep down the swelling), but I’m definitely in “what I need is right here!” mode. But the solution this time isn’t with me, and that has turned on a different timer. Instead of a countdown clock that I might have to add another day or week to, this one is just a running stopwatch.

I don’t know when the world will no longer be a Minesweeper board of disease. I don’t know if I’m already laden with antibodies, and thus safe, or if I’m still a little corona lamb, tender and in danger of stumbling into this disease’s path. For now I’ll keep counting up and, you know, try to keep the tears dammed up. Counting up is easier than trying to predict how long it will be until my arms can wrap around another person for any reason: affection, greeting, introduction, joy, or the hell of it. It’s far easier than imagining that first time when, hopefully, I’m hugging someone who doesn’t mind being held for a real, long hug (as in both a real hug and a long hug as well). And if my tear ducts produce as expected, someone who doesn’t mind some crying on their shoulder.

Fuck, I can’t even think about it without crying right now… what hope is there that I can hold it together when the day comes? I’ll keep tracking week by week. Knock down some of the previous records. Maybe wash the hair first. Makeup next. Figure out a socially distanced, hug-less picnic with friends. Something to help me heal, something to get better at. Something to keep from checking out.