My First Venture into the After-world

I have been wanting to get outside for too long now, out of the stifling confines of my home that I so used to crave for – a feeling borne of experiencing thousands of miles of distance put in between for nearly two years, experiencing the throb of pain that only physical distance can bring. 

And then I got to get outside, see the world of After. Or is it After-world now? It did kind of feel like it, I’ll be honest. Like only ashes of what it used to be.

Not at first, though. 

At first, I just let myself breathe in the fresh wind that was not convoluted by carbon dioxide exhaled together in the corral of four walls. The wind smelled slightly of rain and dampened earth and fresh oxygen, and it lifted some fronds of my hair, made them caress my cheeks, as I started walking. 

At first, I felt exulted really, because it was the first time in months I got to see my friend, meet her and talk with her without a screen of glass. I was happy, elated as we walked, began our usual chattering, our usual banter and spilled laughs over some passersby's tilt of nose, or our own unfamiliar and odd, alien-like looks. We walked and took in the familiarity of the roads we love, the known bustle of the cars, the sauntering and jogging of the people around us. 

As we walked, I tried to careen myself back to feeling normal, or whatever standard of normalcy we had before.

But we can only pretend so much, even to ourselves.

Eventually, I couldn’t prevent the finger of unease creeping into me, almost prodding my eyes open, almost thrusting me to see the new normal for what it was.

That the rows of cars ambling and rushing past us were scant in number, that everywhere I looked, there were people with half-appeared faces, making me feel like I’d arrived at a masquerade party in a ballroom. Except, instead of a ballroom, it was a grayed, cemented street flanked by cracked stoned pavements and fleets of various combinations of stores. And instead of the elegance and glimmer of a masquerade party, there was only the plain ordinariness of a mundane scene presented before me in the most unusual and dismantling way possible.

Actually, you’re right, it wasn’t anything like a masquerade party in a ballroom. That was a lousy analogy, yeah.

The only part of the analogy resembling an analogy was the mask part. Because there was a screen between us, only it wasn’t made of glass but of sheath of dark, thick cloth stretched over half of our faces. My breath was clotting inside the shell of that mask, clusters of the same carbon dioxide I wanted to banish almost choking me. My face bore beads of sweat from forehead to nose, my cheeks flushed and burning from heat and my exhalations so much that when I entered a store and they held a thermal scanner to my face, the guy took a reflexive step back in alarm and almost waved me out of the store, politely, as he showed me my slightly higher-than-normal temperature on the scanner.

Hilarious and embarrassing, yes.

Forgetful, no.

Eventually, I couldn’t ignore the frequent, more-than-necessary-and-yet-needed halts we had to endure whenever we were to buy some much-needed relief from the heat and the humidity of the day, here some cake, there some lozenges, some drinks. And how each time we had to remember to be extra cautious and anxious and a little bit scared to touch anything else that wasn’t our own skin, anything else that has been touched by another’s skin. How we had to immediately pull open our purses fretfully and lather the little objects we purchased with sanitizer, then rub our own hands with it, letting the caution and guardedness mix rapidly with unrestrained paranoia. 

Eventually, I couldn’t feign that I wasn’t dying of thirst anymore and the only reason I stopped myself from lunging at my friend’s bag to haul out the bottle of water I knew she was carrying was the redundant thought of the bottle possessing the fingerprints of several others who weren’t me, and Christ, wasn’t that unsafe.

Eventually, I couldn’t not feel that I was actively, too-consciously preventing myself from looping my arm through hers – something I am prone to do always when I am walking, apparently, as my friends would chant – Social distancing and all that jazz.

Eventually, I kind of got hurt that we were shooed away from an air-conditioned shop immediately after buying ourselves tiny treats, instead of getting to enjoy some cool, artificial wind inside to soothe our burns from the heat along with it. The shopkeeper's suspicion of catching the infamous virus from us was written all over her tired face. Or eyes, at least.

Eventually, I could feel the shuddering ache in my leg muscles as we winded down our walk, slowly, my knees trembling ever so lightly to be walking for almost two hours straight because we couldn’t get seats near the park or the bridge or the lake we skirted around. Or more like, we didn’t trust ourselves to claim the seats. Because isn’t it too much hassle to perform the same routine again? – Of sanitizing the bench with little drops of congealed alcoholic liquid we carried with us like an immunity system, then sanitizing our palms like that because who knows what we might have touched along the way without realizing?

By the time I got back to my house, the elation and bliss of seeing my friend after a long time was eclipsed by a fatigue that was physical as well as mental. I barely managed to wash my hands and feet (thoroughly, Ma, yes) with soap and strip off my possibly-virus-laden clothes in the bathroom in favor of my clean, virus-free ones and mop my purse and phone in sanitizer – again – before I collapsed into my bed.

As I stared at the spinning blades of the fan hanging from the ceiling overhead, I contemplated, searched inside myself – if every other traipse out of the house was going to go as thrillingly as this, if I’d even want to attempt another one after this – and also, if the fan might fall right on me, knocking out the possibility of any other traipse out of the house.

Honestly, I don’t know. The disappointment of the day wasn’t predictable, and I’d like to cling to it, but time does erode the edges of disappointing memories and tend to make them blurry. 

I was so eager to wander, to finally see the outside world like a bird imprisoned in a cage for far too long that I forgot that the world I was getting back to was no longer the same one of my longing.

It kind of takes away the buzzing anticipation and joy of getting back to it. 

And fills me with a profound sense of sad and hopeless. Because no matter what, it’ll probably always be like this now on. People a little bit scared and anxious of being near each other, donning a mask because they have to, washing every object they receive from others off their leftover touches.

It’s the only way to live now, but I am not going to mistake measures to ensure safety for normalcy again, or pretend to have a slice of freedom from a world which cannot afford freedom anymore.

With all its wretchedness and pollution, I realize I do crave for the world it used to be, crave the clutter of people roaming the sidewalks everyday with their unhidden, creepy and beautiful faces, the scores of buses and cars plundering along and then jamming the streets in frustrating columns, crave how big and suffocating and lumpy and crowded and bleary and littered and free the world used to look like.

Now it’s only a giant phantom of that world, carrying ashes of degeneration in its squeaky-clean, environmentally-enthusiastic winds. Now it's better and worse in ways we didn’t see coming.

With all its wretchedness and pollution, I do miss what it used to be, that it'd never be again.