Anxiety in the times of Covid

 Hello,

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I remember that I heard the first news about the covid and felt that it would never reach these latitudes, at that time I was trying to finish the university, I was already writing my thesis (my tutor kept making my life miserable as he knew how to do), and I remember that I had already given up my room because in April I had planned to go to another city. From one moment to the next, all the countries began to declare quarantine, in Colombia the president announced a "drill" of preventive isolation for the weekend, and I had resigned from my job in January because I was mentally exhausted.

I remember that weekend I stayed at my ex's house, we ordered a pizza and in my mind was the idea: take advantage of this moment because you won't be able to eat with this peace of mind for a long time. And I decided to take a picture of my slice of pizza. That weekend we were literally locked up, we had bought food to prepare and we were watching television or movies, it was something curious to be at home because his parents were also there, but in general terms we hardly saw each other, just for lunch and that's it.

I remember feeling unprotected and scared because I couldn't go to my parents' house and I was worried because I didn't have a job, I was floating, I didn't even have my own bed, I had gotten rid of a lot of my stuff by that point. I remember that anxiety was more present than ever, but it began to magnify my catastrophic thoughts, when they sent us to mandatory quarantine, I thought that food products were going to run out and they would start robbing the apartments of the place where I lived (of I actually remember that I bought a padlock to put on the balcony door and even used cords to somehow prevent them from opening the door so quickly).

I started documenting my days, I recorded myself because I had the idea to share what was happening in this part of the world (I haven't reviewed all the videos yet), I managed to document until April 16th, 2020. I had to find a place to live during the first week of April because the room had already been handed over, the problem was that nobody was interested in renting houses or rooms because people couldn't leave their homes so working was a very complicated matter, the people who had authorization to leave were health personnel or companies that have permits and have biosecurity measures.

The most practical solution was to go live with an aunt in the second grade (we had already lived together and it really was a very complicated situation), there was no other way and of course I had to pay her rent, at that time my parents helped me with that because I didn't have a job. I was with them for about 20 days, the person I was with helped me move things (we did it at night so they wouldn't stop us to ask us what kind of authorization we had to move around in a pandemic), luckily we didn't run into any policemen while we did the mess.

While I was with them, I had my birthday, they gave me a cake, we sang and it was a very special birthday, I felt quite alone, because although I was with a part of the family, I really wanted to be with my parents. The person I was with at that time brought me a birthday cake and the next day we finished (it gave me a kind of crisis and I didn't quite understand how they worked). So I was in a pandemic, far from home and having ended a relationship (a pretty screwed-up chemical cocktail for the moment), being quite honest, the ending hit me hard but it was quite manageable, deep down I knew that there wasn't much future for us, from time to time I cried, but how couldn't I, with all the crap that was going on? 

Incredibly, they called me from the company where I had worked before to offer me a position for a new company, the problem was that the position was face-to-face, in the same way I presented all the interviews (I needed money), at that time I was making the final adjustments to my thesis and I didn't have my own computer, so I wrote to a friend to ask if he could lend me his computer, while I was at my friend's house they called me to tell me that he was going to work on April 20th (or a day around those dates), I commented to my cousin and the answer I received was: if you work you cannot live at home because you put us all at risk. So I decided to move to my friend's house, obviously they were going to charge me rent but they had no problem with me going out to work.

So I went to get clothes and some of my things and went to work the following week, they had assigned us transportation because they were in charge of "disinfecting" the buses and everything else, there were biosafety protocols to be able to enter the company, mandatory hand washing, daily health status report, keeping a certain distance between people present in training and of course mandatory use of face masks.

I remember that when I arrived, I sat next to the elevator in that, a guy who was there started talking to me, asking me things about my process and everything else (the job was in customer service in English), he was telling me that he had to take some additional courses to be able to start working there, his name is Johan, he is a very kind and good person, we hit it off from the first moment, however they made us in different groups, he was going for a campaign and I was going for one different.

Random situation: in Colombia we had never experienced a historical moment in which we had to buy food/objects to survive for X days in the face of a global crisis, as it turns out that what ran out first in supermarkets was toilet paper, which became in a meme after a few months.

To be continue...