We Are Now Uncomfortable in Close Proximity with Others

It was totally unexpected: my dream, last night, was ticking along quite beautifully until we turned a corner in a shopping complex and joined a line up to pay for our food purchases. Then it got claustrophobic.

The door to the cashiers was closed to restrict traffic at the tills, and the line up behind us began to get congested. The man behind us was so close that I could feel him breathing down my neck, literally.

Then I realized that we’d forgotten our face masks. That’s when the dream became a nightmare.

As we all have been living this nightmare for eight months now, you’d think we’d be used to it by now. And what my dream showed me was the fact that it still isn’t “normal” by any understanding of that word.

But, to be honest, this is the first time I’ve dreamed about the pandemic, so that’s ‘interesting’.

Social distancing is creating barriers to intimacy. There, I’ve said it, now. (And, just to demonstrate how invidious this pandemic is, I had to take a full minute before I could remember what the word ‘intimacy’ was.)

Like everyone else, I’m feeling coronavirus fatigue.