“I was built with a love of the night and the unquiet coffin, that’s all. If you disapprove, I can only shrug my shoulders. It’s what I have.”

–Stephen King, On Writing

Here’s what we’re not supposed to say: quarantine in a room with the curtains drawn for five days—no kids asking for assistance, no husband pawing for attention, no chores or work—that’s pretty much a stay-cation. Sign me up. Cost of admission: sore throat, headache, and weird sporadic muscle and joint pain? If that’s what it takes…

A friend of mine last year told me she was really looking forward to her colonoscopy. I can’t make that up. This is what it has come to for working mothers during the pandemic. Put me under twilight anesthesia and shove a camera up my rear—it beats reality.

When it comes to escapism, a lot of women want beautiful scenery, an impossible romance, Hallmark-esque predictability. If that’s what calls to you when no one is around to judge your picks I wish you hours on end of whatever Candace Cameron Bure stars in next.

My entertainment interests pull dark. Give me uncomfortable laughter, tickle my funny bone with the taboo; drama, suffering, addiction, the macabre, this is where my magnetic interest lies. I wish Disney inspiration and light-hearted comedies called to me. But on the other side of forty, I agree with Jeff Bezos, “You don’t choose your passions, your passions choose you.” (Also, “free delivery today on qualifying orders,” is Ammmazing.)

Left alone in the cocoon of my room, I binged the Hulu series Dopesick (a five-star must watch, IMO).  I watched the movies: Four Good Days, The Way Back, The Tender Bar, Dead Poet Society, As Good as it Gets (classic), and Joe Bell. I liked most of them, and I knew my husband would not have enjoyed any of them, in fact, he would have disliked a few of them so much I’d have been inclined to apologize at the end. (I’m a woman, so in case I haven’t mentioned it lately, I’m sorry.)

The gift of isolation is that I didn’t owe anyone anything. Whether I liked a choice or didn’t, it was on me, only my time wasted—and that was liberating. I even watched Brazen on Netflix which is a Nora Roberts adaptation starring Alyssa Milano.  It was terrible. There are a lot of things I’d rather you know about me than the fact that I watched that movie—all the way through. But it happened.

On day 2, I lay in bed with my throat feeling like a cat had used it to sharpen its claws. The OTC meds only taking the edge off. Still, I was oddly content. Not having to juggle the seven balls of my regular life made Quarantine liveable.

When my husband got home from work, he hollered that he was ordering Chinese food. I’m not opposed to culinary globetrotting, but was ordering take out his solution to dinner until I resumed my meal prep duties?

“Can you just put four cans of chili in a pot and heat it up?” (BAM! Sixty dollars—saved.)

He didn’t love the idea, but once the children showed him where the chili, can opener, and stockpots were, he managed.

I went down to make my own dinner. Unaccustomed to seeing me naked-faced and wearing the faded jammies of someone who might need their antidepressant dose bumped up, the kids asked if I was okay. “She’s okay guys. She just doesn’t feel well,” my husband assured them.

I wondered as I carried my scrambled eggs up to my lair—still wearing my KN95 mask—if I was really both: okay and not feeling well. I shut the door and resumed episode 6 of Dopesick. Oh, I thought, yes I am.