Dare I say it, could we really be seeing the light at the end of our forced confinement tunnel? (Cue Wile E. Coyote being creamed by the light at the end of the tunnel.)
In a matter of days my summer plans have gone from the safe, hypnotically repetitive yet still bizarro plod of a turtle on a hamster wheel (or maybe actually more a turtle in one of those plastic hamster balls, because truth be known I'm always hermetically sealed)... to the sprinting speed of a greyhound chasing a rabbit through his newly adopted backyard. It happened so fast, like popcorn in hot oil, plans to travel to Milan, plans to host my friend from Madrid in a week long adult English-immersion camp, and plans to take my long awaited initial foray into the wilds of Spain (Sevilla, Granada, Córdoba) with American-speaking friends from California. Bing, bang, boom, my calendar is now awash with big blocks of plans... Real plans... with other humans... seeing more than just the views from my balconies and the shopfronts along my walk to the grocery store.
And now comes the reckoning. Have I become agoraphobic from my semi-self-induced isolation in a boarded up beach town in Spain?
But seriously... don't you believe that many people who were borderline agoraphobic may have been shoved over the edge during the past 15 months? Do you agree that some people are going to come out of this (if this is actually the coming out) with PTSD?
I think mental health professionals are going to be overwhelmed like an accountant in tax season. (OK, I was trying to come up with a “busier than a” line, but poking around online for something hilarious I found this site, where I’m kinda sorta thinking non-native English speakers list their “busier than” jokes… Take a quick read.)