I’m finally going to take some time for your website. So I can put it under maintenance. I’m waiting for your green light before I do that.
After a few back and forth on WhatsApp, it is agreed that my brother can put my website under maintenance. Shortly through the process, we call one another and run through some basics so I can keep updating my diary as my brother does the hard work.
We chat about the details that need to be ironed out, about what I need to change, and through it all catch up with life. His boss is still being horrible but there isn’t much my brother can do in the current climate. So he endures. I don’t ask too many questions as I don’t think it’s something my brother wants to talk about. He has been thinking about it enough as it is. At the week-end, he will visit my mother for mother’s day. He will have to take the train to do this. For a moment, I am baffled by the idea of taking a train but France is for now a safer place to be, or so I perceive.
My sister sent me a text the day before as she was enjoying a barbecue with friends, a bottle of Champagne opened in the background to celebrate this new found freedom. She was able to speak with someone else face to face that aren’t her husband or children for the first time in weeks. I can only imagine what this would feel like.
I know we are freer to move now but I am scared so I remain indoors. With my partner, we are talking about visiting Berrow sands, a long expanse of beach by the Severn estuary. This does not feel safe. My body wants to resist but I push back with my mind. I have to start somewhere, step outside my self-imposed boundaries and regain my freedom. I have to learn to live with the threat of Covid-19. The virus is not going to disappear and life will return to a pre-lockdown routine soon. Some colleagues have returned to the office today. My friend sent me a photo of her at her desk, the familiar photo on the wall hanging behind her. She is smiling in the photo. She is one of the few that has been working throughout this entire lockdown. I picture myself at my desk but who I see is someone else, the person I was before lockdown.
One step at a time, I remind myself. For now I am not back to work, not for another week. I push my thoughts aside and return my attention to my website. I edit previous posts, the formatting having gone wrong in this new design.
In the afternoon, I work on Queer Out Here. I lay the groundwork, adjusting noise levels, applying EQ here and there, and making sure everything generally sounds good and level. There are pieces about lockdown and pieces about a world pre-lockdown. I listen to them all slowly, methodically, taking note on the minute details I want to change.
Phrases catch my ears and make me miss a breath. I don’t pause to consider what I have heard and how it’s making me feel. I file it for later. I will listen to all those pieces a lot more in the coming days. For now, I want to work and get this done. But the feeling lingers. I am ill at ease, unable to shake off the sadness of the day before.
I am unsure why I am sad. I suspect I feel more than sadness too but I am finding it difficult to express. I am adrift more than I have been before. I have a new routine that I know and trust, boundaries that keep me safe. But they are about to change. Some colleagues have returned to the office today. And soon I will too. But this will not be the office or routine of before. Those are gone. And maybe it is this loss, these days of before that I am sad about when I listen to people telling of their travels in a pre-lockdown world. I know what I have lost and I am unsure of what will become.