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It's Thursday, March 19th, 2020.
5 days now since I last left our place, I'm surprised that I've been pretty okay with not being able to go out when up until last week I used to go out every single day. There's something new happening every single day so I guess having this psychological expectation in the back of your mind kind of keeps you looking forward to something.
I've spoken to my mother back home every day now which is also an update to our previous once a week if any routine.
Generally speaking, I'm finding a lot of relief in sharing so many of my own chronic emotional burdens with a whole lot more people these days. I haven't been able to go back to my country for over 4 years now and it's the longest time in my entire life that I've not seen my parents, family members, and my beloved home city. So much has changed for me since I left as a 25-year-old, and it's been tremendously difficult seeing my parents age solely via video-call conversations over a really bad internet connection. It's been hard being unable to travel freely as so many people do but also not having a clear answer on why I simply can't.
When air travel was affected drastically by the recent worldwide pandemic and eventually suspended in many parts of the world including where I live and where my family lives I found some relief in not having to worry about this being something I'm dealing with exclusively. Now and for the first time in forever, I'm not alone in this, and I don't have to have this conversation about my travel plans back home or the lack of it to everyone.
Yesterday, the USCIS, the immigration authority for those of you who may not be familiar, announced closing all of their in-person operations until at least the beginning of April, something that brought both anxiety and relief to me knowing that I'm not the only one affected by this closure.
Being a woman immigrant and a Muslim at this time and place hasn't been the easiest experience in the past few years, it comes with a lot of challenges on top of them is social isolation. Now for the first time, millions of people will be experiencing social isolation under a new guise and for a different reason, I'm learning about a new concept called social distancing.
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