I find myself in a bit of a quandary. Let me know what you think. I was going out a bit more a couple of months ago, when restrictions were lifted, while of course still being careful. To be clear “going out more” meant that aside from essential shopping and occasional river walks, I would go also out for tapas a couple of times a week. But since the recent curfew and all that I’ve stopped my walks and maybe meet a friend for tapas once a week. The rest of the time I’m at home.

And the thing is, I’m okay with that on a personal level. The new restrictions with shops/bars/restaurants closing at 6 pm, no going outside our municipalities, and the curfew from 10 pm to 7 am, don’t actually affect my “new normal” life since I haven’t been out in the evening for months and haven’t travelled outside Sevilla since March. But I am wondering… am I TOO okay with this? As a person who suffers from agoraphobia, is all this giving me too much “permission” to just succumb rather than push myself to get out there?

I am asking myself these questions recently, especially because whenever there is a “reason” for me not to go out, everything inside me breathes a sigh of relief. Reasons could be bad weather, bad timing, work to do (just finished my first commissioned article since lockdown).

Bad timing is really mostly MY THING about only being able to go out once a day. Why? Well let me tell you. Since March I have not gone out without doing an entire “disinfecting” process upon arriving back home. This includes leaving my shoes outside my front door, taking off all clothing and either putting them in the wash or leaving them to hang (jackets, etc) in the spare room. Then I shower, wash my hair, and get into clean house clothes. Nobody (other than Tony Blackhands) has been inside my apartment since March. I admit I fall short of disinfecting every food item that is delivered to my home, so sue me.

But I mean honestly, I cannot do this more than once a day. And so I have to plan each outing to coincide with the right time of day for me do end up doing my disinfecting thang afterwards. And oftentimes I just go – ah fuck it. I’ll just stay home, it’s not worth the bother. At first I was really missing not going out. I was hankering to just go walk around, even if I didn’t meet up with a friend, it was enough to just be outside. But I find I don’t even care much about that anymore.

Last time I walked over the Triana bridge (bridges are REALLY hard for me, often resulting in panic attacks) it felt like sweet relief that I probably wouldn’t have to do that again for a long time. Because now I have an “excuse”. But I’m not really happy with the giving in and giving up part of all of this. I mean, I could still be getting up and going out for my river walks in the morning, if only I didn’t spend most of the night wide awake so that mornings end up lost to me.

The other day someone asked me, upon hearing I am mostly at home… So what do you do all day?

Somehow the day gets filled up. I am online a lot, talking with people. I am reading stuff (again online, haven’t opened a book in ages), I only occasionally watch TV because it’s hard to concentrate, but I enjoy cooking (often the highlight of the day). Am I lonely? Only in the physical sense… I seriously miss hugs, being in the arms of the friends I love.

How about you? How are you coping with all this distancing? You probably all know how I feel about people who are not distancing (selfish entitled assholes!). But that’s not you. It’s maybe weird that one of my personal worries now is that I am going to get to like this too much. I mean, if I can’t get hugs, why bother going out?  😉