It feels like a distant memory. Or a dream that was forgotten on waking up. It was 6:30am as the sun peered through the window. I kept tossing and turning until finally giving into the bittersweet reality of having to attend school.

After high-fiving everybody in the hallways and faintly smiling at the teachers as they pass by, I was standing with my friends at the window, on the second floor.

I was only hallucinating. The life I spent outside this house was just an illusion and I’m back now to the grim reality.

The first few days of quarantine were pure bliss. Sitting on the couch all day long with a cup of coffee and a phone. Perfect. But as the days went by, the seriousness of the situation became apparent. And as more and more people started being delivered to the grave, slowly the bright, vibrant colours on the walls turned black, as if a fire had eaten up everything and now all I was left with were ash painted walls.

It’s been months of me being locked up inside this house, already. The house that I once loved coming back into after school. The house that once made me feel safe and protected. The house that inhabited all the people I love. My house, my home, that I now dread. Now desolate, daunting and insubstantial. Even the air around felt heavy, as if something was weighing down on me. It felt as if the walls were staring right into my lifeless soul, asking me to provide to it abominable loneliness.

With all this extra time in hand, one would expect me to be uncommonly productive. However, nothing really went according to plan. As days went by, I went from thinking about what that homeless guy I saw everyday sitting on the edge of a foot-path, was doing, to thinking about if he was dead yet. Maybe that’s what happens when you’re living through constant threats of Third World War breaking out, climate change slowly deteriorating your home and then a worldwide pandemic. Presumably the world was playing a deadly game of tag, with all of us running as fast as we could to avoid being touched.

I wonder how far I would go until all the memories I’ve ever made turn into grim reapers and haunt me till the end of time. Or maybe I don’t even make it till there, maybe I’m even dying right now. See that’s the thing, the obliviousness of the situation makes it all the more exasperating.

I guess, all of this is just the world making us aware of where we stand. That we would never be able to compete with its greatness and that within the vastness of this universe, we are powerless.

Oh, the things I would do to get out into the crowd. What I would give just to satisfy my hunger for human connection? To get to experience just simply walking down a street, with hundreds of strangers who I know nothing about; to bump into a stranger and then faintly apologising until finally walking away from their life, never running into them again. To ride on commercial planes filled with thousands of people, all travelling to different destinations, but sharing those few moments sitting together in serenity; to sit in overcrowded cafes, watching the cars drive by; to just simply hug a friend after having a bad day ... maybe to just live without the constant fear of dying, I guess.

And well, as expected, reminiscing the past ended up with me overthinking excessively. What if this never ends? What if waking up to the news of more people sick and dying becomes a routine? What if this is the end of the world?

It’s like my way of coping up with the present is to make myself believe that the past I lived in is my present. I mean, today I woke up thinking about how good yesterday was at school,only to realise that I didn’t go to school.

You could say life has had enough of me constantly sulking about absolutely nothing because over the course of a few days, I surely did get a reason. Suddenly being caged up inside this house was far from being a problem. One of my worst nightmares was now coming true: my dad was a suspected coronavirus patient. Fear and anxiety had engulfed every member of the now cursed house. It felt as if we were living in the music video of a sad song that never fails to make you cry. We were dangling off the edge of a cliff that wasn’t even marked in our copy of the map. One of us could possibly be dying right now in front of our eyes, but nobody could do anything, just as helpless as a whale who had washed up on the shore.

It could possibly be Eid the next day. We all went up on the rooftop to look for the moon, alongside our neighbours, just as eager, to find a spot of light in the dark abyss. It was 18 hours away from finding out if we’re going to fight the biggest fight of our lives. It was time to prepare, but not knowing what to prepare for. No referees, no rules, no time-outs, just blind faith in yourself and the people around you.

At 10pm, it was announced that Eid would be the next day. Something that usually called for celebration was now of no importance to us. A part of me longed for everyone to maybe just pretend to be normal, for two seconds, to feel some sort of relief, to steal just one breath away.

I guess all we could do now was sit and stare briskly at the walls. For the first time, in a long while, it felt as if we had no time left, as we waited to get the test results.

Published in Dawn, Young World, January 9th, 2021