Torrential rain, which started yesterday afternoon and didn’t stop, added to my sense of quarantine gloom.
Now that the weather is excluding me from the delights of my garden it’s making my virtual house arrest feel like a real one.
I know it sounds daft as that all I’m experiencing is the minor imposition of two weeks at home but it’s not a feeling I’m enjoying.
Throughout my entire adult life I’ve been able to go where I want when I want and I don’t like it when I can’t.
This may have something to do with my number one fear which centres around being locked-in.
Things like the simply awful locked-in syndrome where sufferers can only move their eyes while being fully conscious terrify me. I can imagine nothing worse.
I fear everything from being buried alive to being stuck in a lift and that moment in TV dramas when there is the clunk of the locking of prison cell door makes me shudder.
Just being left with your own thoughts and fears forever, or at least as long as you live, is something I well, don’t want to think about.
I think this phobia revolves around a fear of confinement which manifests itself in other ways particularly when I wake up in a strange, dark place. I have no idea why I feel like this.
I guess those afflicted by any kind of real confinement eventually adapt to their situation. Surely eventually their fear subsides and they are left with some sort of inner calm. This is perhaps overtaken by ever diminishing waves of panic until they can achieve some sort of equilibrium. You would hope so.
I know I’m overdramatising my own situation which bears no comparison to some of the examples above. I’m just stuck at home for a couple of weeks with no pressure, no stress and, in truth, I’m coping ok with it.
After all it’s what millions of older and vulnerable people have had to cope with since Covid hit our shores.
I’m not sure whether part of my problem is age-related. As a child I could happily sit for hours totally absorbed in my own made up games, playing tennis against the garage wall and working on my scrapbook. I need to recapture some of that and find some my own inner peace.
Too often I’m looking to fill time, rather than savour every moment. I’m going to use these next 11 days of enforced confinement to try to change my mindset.
I’m going to allow my routine to fall by the wayside, try not to distract myself by creating needless deadlines and milestones. I’m cutting back on the distractions of exercise and alcohol.
I’m also going to stop looking ahead, booking things and making appointments and just be me.
I wonder how I’ll get on!