The Great Indoors

Sezane shirt
Zara jeans (similar)
Rouje boots (similar)
Chanel handbag
Vintage necklace (similar)
Aurate New York bracelet (c/o)
Linjer rings (c/o) (similar)
Mejuri earrings (similar)
Location: The Fort Garry Hotel – Winnipeg, Manitoba

I love to explore, but I’m a city girl through and through. Trees and lakes hold limited appeal for me, unless they’re conveniently positioned near cute cafes and elegant hotels. I will choose a visit to a museum over a hike every single time. It’s because of that that I spent most of my life believing that I didn’t love being outdoors. The fact is, I can do the things I love just as easily inside as outside – reading, writing, reading more… Who needs to be outside, I thought? But the winters in Winnipeg feel unbearably long for me. It was only when I moved to Vancouver that I realised what I missed in those long winter months was the ability to spend time outside without experiencing the physical pain of extreme cold.

The announcement came just days ago: lockdown will continue for two more weeks. I knew it would. In fact, it was both the decision I expected and wanted, but it disappointed me, too. We’ve spent nearly a year exploring the great indoors. I know every chip in the paint on the walls of my apartment, every crack in the popcorn plaster on the cielings that I can’t wait to remove. After all this time, it would be so lovely to be able to go outside and do something. The key phrase in that sentence is do something, because even though it’s been an unseasonably mild winter, I am still not a nature girl. I like being outside to walk between destinations, enjoying the fresh air between, for example, brunch and shopping.

But no. We’re stuck in the great indoors for another two weeks, probably longer, due to the combined failure of our neighbours to comply with public health orders that asked them to stay home during the holiday season and of our provincial government to distribute vaccines in a timely manner. At this point, it’s not so much that I’m tired of being indoors as that I’m tired of feeling like I’m the only one who still is. I’m becoming resentful, the same way I was resentful in high school when I found myself doing all the work for an alleged group project. I’ve made every sacrifice asked of me, and then some. But I’m still stuck inside because others are unwilling to accept the temporary inconvenience of doing the same.

…the longer they hold out, acting like the pandemic isn’t happening to them, the longer it goes on. The longer I spend indoors, trying to cling to what remains of my sanity. I love my apartment, don’t get me wrong. But the indoors is not so great when it’s the only place you’re allowed to be apart from the grocery store.

As far as problems caused by the pandemic go, mine are relatively minor. I still have a job, and a home that doubles as my office. I’m safe, healthy and immensely privileged. But I am also exhausted by watching other people like me act as if existence entitles them to safety, health and privilege, going on living as they always did and thus prolonging the crushing boredom of lockdown for the rest of us who are just trying to do what we need to do to get through to the other side.

This will end, just like every other experience that once felt limitless, stretching out infinitely before me. The same way I still find old metro tickets in coat pockets, date stamped 2017 or 2013 or even 2009, someday I will reach into a pocket and pull out an old mask. I’ll smile half-heartedly, shaking my head as I reflect on how strange it was to live through a pandemic. And then I’ll toss the old mask in the garbage, giving it no more thought.

Someday. But not today. Today, this is my reality. And this reality, I remain trapped indoors, confined by the poorly considered decisions and lack of judgement of those around me. And I’m sick of it. Full stop. My well of patience dried up some time last week. I am not ever at my best in January. I mostly survived last January because I knew we were going to Chicago in February. And staying indoors, with nothing to do and no end in sight, only compounds my seasonal misery.

I don’t expect anyone to feel sorry for me. Far from it. I think many of you will recognise yourselves in this narrative. But if you don’t, if there are public health guidelines you’re not following, please, I beg you, start now. We’ll all get back to a life resembling our normal one sooner as a result.

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