There is a recurring feeling in my life. A feeling I associate with a time and a place. The feeling of a Sunday afternoon, which for some reason tastes of melancholy and even a bit of despair. As if the start of a new week signified the death of the being who lived in the week that just ended. I have had this feeling since I can remember, at least since middle school.
When I walked my dog on a Sunday afternoon, there was something about the calm and emptiness of the streets that made me uncomfortable. At first, I feared this feeling since I didn’t understand it, but by the time I was in high school, I had accepted it. I got used to it. I simply called it the Sunday Sadness.
After a while I learned how to escape from it. By college I started going out with a girl, who would eventually become my girlfriend, on Sunday afternoons; one day I explained this to her and she understood. With her, I discovered that as long as I was with company the feeling would disappear. With this, I began to appreciate the things that a Sunday afternoon brought: the beauty of the deserted streets at sunset, the distant sound of children playing in some park or the occasional kermesse of some church celebrating something.
As of writing this, it has been 125 days since the pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 began, and I have just figured out how the quarentine makes me feel. It’s like a long Sunday afternoon, that bittersweet feeling prolonged throughout an entire summer. Just as sunset announces the end of a week and the beginning of a new one, every so often the end of the pandemic is announced with great fanfare, but so far it has not ended (nor have things improved, honestly). My family has been fortunate during this time, as we have not lost any loved ones to the disease, and the economic losses have been manageable so far; but not all of my close ones have been so lucky.
So, yes, I write this because I feel like I’m back in high school. Unable to do anything to improve the situation, unable to see my friends, partner, or my family with the ease I had gotten used to. Constantly enclosed, surrounded by screens, and living that internet metaphor day by day.
Now I just look out the window at this eternal sunset, hoping soon to be able to see my grandparents again, walk hand in hand with the one I love through a park, and gather to laugh with my friends, because I simply miss them.