Erin Stevens
On the fifth day of social distancing, I had my first breakdown. Always a rule follower, I was doing a great job of staying away from everyone, mainly because I live alone. It was just me, hanging out on my couch, in my tiny studio apartment, with a fictional series about aliens cued up on Netflix.
Before transporting to Roswell, New Mexico for the evening, I gave a final scroll through Instagram. It seemed like every post I saw in my feed, every story I tapped on, everyone was with someone else 一 spouses or partners, family, children, roommates, friends, fugitives being shielded from the law, etc.
Everyone was with someone else but me.
On any other night, my home-bodied-self would have been like wow, that’s really nice. Good for them! And then I’d go back to eating Izzy’s ice cream and watching an alien fall in love with a human without giving it a second thought.
But this wasn’t just another night. This was the first Tuesday night of many that would be spent practicing the art of social distancing, and my mind was busier than normal with its incessant overthinking. Nighttime has a way of tricking us into believing the worst things about ourselves and our situations. The weight of an irrational fear I’d never had before tap danced like a hippo on my chest. It felt as if heavy words like “quarantine” and “social distancing” and “isolation” were trying to bust down my front door, three thieves in the night trying to steal my peace and my hope.
I am so alone I thought, over and over and over. For about five long minutes I stared up at my apartment’s puckered ceiling and had a very uncute meltdown, letting the feeling of absolute loneliness unravel and weave through me - whether it was true or not didn’t matter.
I needed to get a grip before my neighbors heard me through our shared, thin walls and called the cops or animal control. So I got up to make a cup of tea, because what else are you supposed to do when there’s an internal and external crisis at hand?
On my way to the kitchen, I almost stepped in a small, fresh pile of cat puke.
Murphy sat next to it, blinking up at me.
“Seriously?” I asked, my voice cracking. “Read the room, man.”
More blinking. How dare you forget about me, he seemed to say. I’m here, too.
I grabbed the roll of paper towel and disinfectant that’s always within arms reach these days, then turned around to clean up the mess.
It was gone.
I looked at Murphy, confused, then repulsed.
“Did you just eat...” I started to ask. He answered by cleaning his mouth with his paws. I disinfected the area where I thought the puke had been, but couldn’t be certain.
“You’re so gross,” I said to him.
And then, I laughed.
Erin Stevens is a writer and cat mom living in Minnesota.