33: SELF IDENTITY IN SELF ISOLATION
My alarm pings, echoing off the walls of my bedroom on a sunny Friday morning. The birds flirt outside my window signaling the beginnings of spring. I am reminded of this time last year when the world shut down. It seemed surreal, almost over night, the screeching boisterous streets of New York fell eerily quiet. A year later I find myself still confined to the now all too familiar walls of my Brooklyn apartment. A year of masks on masks, a pocketful of sanitizer and limited to no in-person gatherings nor quality time. As humans do, we have adapted to these limiting factors that are beyond our control. But I can’t help but wonder how a year in isolation has impacted my relationship with self, in the short and long term. When there are no distractions, no external inputs, where do I find myself?
At first I found comfort in the persistent energy of social media and its ability to connect me with people near and far, especially at a time of such turmoil and confusion. After all, as an only child growing up in the dot com boom I was no stranger to online friends. But the platforms of Instagram and Tiktok soon became tedious and overwhelming. Timelines, including my own, that were once inundated with the flashy trappings of an active social life could no longer hold their appearances. We now have more data than ever confirming that algorithm bias and data discrimination across social platforms distort our perceptions of our lived reality. Basically it’s a rigged game and now there was no denying it. When that skewed reality becomes one of the only spaces for conversation and connection, we see and feel fatigue. And so social media quickly became a trigger for me, the more time I spent on it the more agitated I became with the clear dissonance between our national moment of grief and this alternate reality where worth is calculable. Once my fomo died, the hype did with it and I found a healthier reality in the meanings of the mundane.
In some ways the engagement decline of Instagram and other social apps has evened the playing field. With the lurking pressures of posting about my largely uneventful quarantine life out of the way, I compared myself to others less and found more grounding in my day to day life. I reacquainted myself with the stillness of time. Time stretched on, at first daunting and unrelenting. But it quickly yielded a path to freedom. I had all the time in the world, literally! I reflected on all the ways I had taken time for granted or freely given it without recourse. Now with an abundance of time, I could be intentional about how I spent it, and with whom.
My year in isolation has paved the way for sobering personal reflection and accountability. To be frank, before the pandemic I grossly underestimated the amount of external influences that kept me preoccupied, distracted, and numb. Plus, what was I running from to begin with? It is in the absence of the outside, in the still of solitary quiet, that I leaned into the vulnerability to discover answers, make connections and dig into the roots of feelings that show up in my body, mind and spirit. I got curious about how to spend meaningful time with myself and carve out space for myself -- my thoughts, my rituals, my writings. While this year in isolation has been lonely, heartbreaking, and frustrating, by allowing these uncomfortable feelings some time, empathy and greater introspection, I have gained a new echelon of self awareness. My time in isolation has gifted me with an opportunity to pivot. To pivot away from patterns of behavior and thoughts that kept me self-isolated and paralyzed in fear-based thinking long before the pandemic.
I have a new understanding of the popular adage that warns, "Everywhere you go, there you are". Ultimately, there is no running from self, just avoiding and a lot of dodging. It is no coincidence that this past year I have gotten to know myself in new, curious and insightful ways. I learned that the more I invest in myself, the more I have to offer. I have been compassionate and patient with myself and it has offered me such intimate grace and personal resilience that keeps me hopeful for what comes next. I know that this challenging and lonely year has offered me formidable lessons that I will carry with a new clarity of self.
