I've noticed lately that I am getting more anxious about going outside. It's ironic, because right now going out and about is what I want most. I've been fantasizing about going to all my favorite restaurants and bars, going back to some of my favorite hotels (The Mission Inn in Riverside, Mountain Lodge in Telluride), taking a road trip to every state in the Union including Hawaii and Alaska. I want to put together excursions with all my friends. I want to go to the beach every day, hike on all the hiking trails. I want to get on an airplane, a train, a cruise ship.
But, when I am running out of food, I have been procrastinating going to the grocery store. It's like I am scared, like I don't know what outside is like anymore, what is going on out there. Is it dangerous, are there power hungry cops out there lying in wait to arrest me for some peculiar transgression, demanding to know where I am going, what I am doing. "Oh, I was shopping for groceries, there is food in my trunk, want to see it?"
But when I do go outside, everything seems empty. Like a bomb was dropped and nobody survived except for me. And when I do see another person, somebody daring to walk his dog or a woman arriving in the parking lot in her car, I want to glom onto them like they're a life raft, but watch out, be careful, can't get too close! Keep your social distance! It's like I am the drowning man whose instinct is to climb up on the rescuers head and end up drawing them as well as myself.
Going around in my hot, itchy, and peculiar smelling mask with mist fogging my glasses, I feel like I am a cipher, and everybody else in their mask is a zombie. I feel my smile uselessly spreading across the bottom half of my face, but then I realize nobody can see it, and all I see of them is a cold stare coming from illegible eyes. If I do speak, attempting to say something friendly or funny, they don't even seem to realize that I am talking to them. If I feel all closed up inside myself, they must feel the same themselves. Wow, what a way to separate people from each other.
So I just don't understand outside and don't quite know how to act, or even think that I can act. I have somehow been ostracized. However, what has helped me is to think what it must be like to be one of those out there working for the public in this atmosphere, those in the grocery store or the pharmacy, all they see all day are faceless expressionless eyes and I think they have to suffer their whole day without ever seeing a smile or a friendly face. At Home Depot I was having trouble getting my credit card to pay for something I wanted to buy and an employee, equally masked, helped me get it to work. I said to her, "You never get to see a smile all day, but just know that I am giving you one now but I have to do it vocally." She then said, "Oh, then will you please put in a good word for me?" and showed me where on the receipt I can find a way to go on-line and give her a good evaluation for her service. I said to her, "Oh, yes, definitely--THAT will be smile for you." Moments like that do keep the incipient agoraphobia at bay. But I am worried that if this whole thing goes on much longer, I will permanently lose my real smile due to atrophy.
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