Day Six - GROUNDED

How to stay grounded when the whole world is literally, grounded. Planes sit still in uniform lines on the tarmac. Silent, solitary, grounded.

New Zealand has never felt like such an island, a safe haven. Isolated from the rest of the world, there’s a comfort in that. It makes me feel grounded.

As I sit quietly in lockdown, I feel freer than I have felt for quite some time. Feeling peaceful and grateful, I am calm in my own self with the knowledge that I am okay. I am not trying to control, this cannot be, I am relaxing with what is, whatever that might be.

Creatively, I feel more open, in contrast to being grounded, there’s a healthy artistic frenzy happening that has ignited something in me that has been asleep for a while. Dancing around the edges, I have not been my best creative self. I think I might be now.

Grounded in my ‘self’. I am in happy in the feeling of that.

31 March - 647 coronavirus cases in New Zealand, 58 new cases, 2 in intensive care

Day One - ALONE

Starkly alone. Aching heart and a deep seated sense of dread. Isolated for weeks, if not more. Day one, hard, horrid. Silence, people stop, life is paused in a warped time-zone. I have never felt so alone in my life.

Feeling it, letting it sit, it tries to take hold. I’m quiet, contemplative, sad, deeply sad. Panicked, I want my old life back, the one where there was a future, options, excitement. This one has a sense of doom, spiralling out of control. Where does the future lie?

Time to reflect on what was and what is, time to plan for what is and what will be. Lots of time to think, too much time. Solitary, alone.

For now there is no choice but to bear it. Day one of a sentence I don’t wish to be fucking part of, but I am, so is everybody.

26 March - 283 coronavirus cases in New Zealand, 78 new cases