But reality and a new, sadder and darker “routine” soon hit you. This is my life now:

I’m so used to wearing loose clothes that I fear I will never be able to wear regular clothing items again. Wearing something nice or tight seems unimaginable now. I’m like Cinderella after she loses her shoe, minus the prince. My body feels like a heavy, shapeless weight that I carry around the house covered in the same pants and sweatshirt every day.

I have completely stopped showing myself on camera on Zoom. The excuse I give to everyone is that “My connection is really bad today” (and a very innovative one for me is “Your connection seems to be breaking up – let’s all turn off our cameras so you don’t have issues”), but I have also used “I’m having a terrible allergy that you might not want to see” and “I’m in a part of the house that’s a mess”.

I have very untypical days where I look in the mirror and think “Wow, maybe I am VERY beautiful”, and some others (most of them) where I close my eyes as I approach a mirror just to avoid seeing myself.

It’s been a long time since I felt sexy. The last memory I have of it was the first day in my new apartment in March. I put on my best black underwear (whenever I have to choose “sexy” underwear, I go for black because that’s one of the only good things my ex-boyfriend taught me), lit some candles, and just started dancing on my own.

Being back at my parents’ house now, where all the underwear I have is from when I was eleven, plus being very depressed, makes it impossible to even try to feel sexy now.

Food doesn’t even get me excited anymore. See, I grew up in a family where my mom would try to fix most things with food. Someone bullied you at school today? Here, have some chocolate.

Sad because the online boyfriend you had for 5 years dumped you (this actually happened)? Let’s eat some cheesecake.

For the first days of the lockdown, all we did was plan meals that we would like to have at some point to feel like there was some hope for the future. Now, you could bring a box of Danish bread (still my favorite thing to eat) home and I would feel absolutely nothing.

The only thing that still gives me some sort of hope is online shopping.

It’s a short-term thrill I can only assume adrenaline addicts feel. I plan for what I’d like to buy, do some very thorough research, and ask my friends and mom for their opinions. I already know my credit card information by heart.

I make the purchase and have between 3 to 5 business days ahead where I can wake up looking forward to something.

I’m trying to have a stable love life (as if I ever had it…) but that’s also a long shot. See, when lockdown first started, I went on dating apps and gathered as many “boys to text” as possible, encouraged by an Instagram video I saw in which a couple met during quarantine and fell in love over Zoom.

My innocence led me to believe that a pandemic would change my very disastrous luck when it came to love, but it didn’t: No one has accepted my Zoom date invitations, I haven’t received a pizza at my front door from my secret lover, and no guy that used to date has texted to say sorry for ghosting me.

The closest I get to a love life are the invitations I get from boys who want to sext at 3 am.

And the reason I’m awake at 3 am every night is because I can only sleep at 5 in the morning with the sound of rain playing loudly from YouTube in the background.

I close my eyes to sleep and all my brain wants to tell me about are my past failures, like when I was 10 and guys would call me “the fat Viking” at school, or the fact that no one has ever brought me breakfast in bed, and all the things that could possibly go wrong in the future.

As I’m writing this, the president is about to announce a 20-day extension of this lockdown. I can now affirm that as soon as this ends, I’m ready to go and win some isolation reality show like Big Brother.

I always try to write some silver linings at the end of my posts. At this point, coming up with one seems very hard.

I try to remember that I’m one of the people having the best time during this situation, with a house, a job and a family, and no matter how difficult it is to see it now, a future ahead. But I also have to be honest and say: I sincerely wish things were not this way.

Bear with me, I promise my positivity will be back. Stay safe 🙂