Quarantine Blues

She was lying on her bed. Still wearing yesterday’s clothes, gazing at the dancing shadows of the morning sun. Just lying there. Gazing. Her mind empty and dull.

It was the year 2065 and the new pandemic just put the whole world in a lock down. Everything was closed, everything was put on hold, and she felt as if her life as she knew it just ended.

Hopeless. That is how she felt. Hopeless, lost, and with no future. The pandemic took away all her plans, all her goals seemed unreachable, and everything that made her life worth living was lost. “What is going to happen with my future?” was the question that made her breath difficult and her heart race like she just avoided a car collision. It was the question that made her wake up every night in cold sweats, filled with panic and adrenaline. She has never had them before. These panic attacks. The whole situation truly was: awful.

“Goddammit!” she snapped out of her self-pity, “You have work to do.”

She slowly rolled out of her bed and sat behind the work desk in her two-bed student dorm room. Her roommate’s bed was bare; no bed sheets, no pillows. Linda moved back home when the pandemic started few months ago. She was an asthmatic and living in a student dormitory made the chances of being exposed to the new, deadly virus, much higher than living at home with her parents. She and Linda were never best friends, but at these uncertain times she missed her positive, energetic, and ever so bubbly roomie more than ever.

She finally turned on her laptop and opened Word file with her master’s dissertation. The title and the date were all she had put in so far. Yeah. She was really productive in the last few months. Her mind was way too occupied with the whole pandemic uncertainty to get any work done. But she was determined to start today!

What is the point of all of this?

Well… This motivation was short-lived. The thought of uncertainty creept back in her mind. What is the point of finishing her studies if all the businesses are closed and people are losing their jobs by the masses? Who will hire her after she graduates? Where will she get a job after this? What does she even want out of life?

She was already overwhelmed with the whole transition of ending her studies and entering the workforce and the pandemic made everything ten thousand times worse. She felt the panic creep back in her chest and she tried to take a deep breath and calm herself down.

In the whims of trying to control herself, she noticed something. Something unusual caught her eye and made her forget about her troubles. Trough the window, looking down the empty street, she noticed an elderly lady standing on a long board, being pulled by a black Labrador. The lady was carrying a bright red chair.

She stood by the window, staring at the traveling lady with a red chair. Where was she going? And why did she need that red chair for?