I don’t know if there is a sound psychological reasoning to it, but I become extra anti-social around celebrations. Don’t talk to me about birthdays. Don’t wish me uselessly on days like International Women’s Day or Teachers’ Day. What? What is the point of that? You wished me perfunctorily, and then we never talk again until next year? I mean, it’s even generous to term that “talking”, don’t you think? If all we did was forward each other those greeting card things on WhatsApp, then we never actually talked at all, did we?
So I became even more anti-social during Hari Raya. The basically identical posts on Instagram bored me; perfunctory greetings on WhatApp annoyed me right out. Instead, I tucked in for endless bouts of drama bingeing during the 4.5 days of holiday.
When the government announced that Raya was basically cancelled due to Covid-19, I was unperturbed. Raya has never been a favourite time – the parents will bicker about going back to the maternal kampung, they will disagree about stopping along the way to see Dad’s eldest daughter whose deadbeat husband will always try his hardest to be cross with everybody, we will be stuck in traffic for around 15 hours on average, everybody’s mood would just be very unstable because everyone is stressing out – Tok for having to share her chamber with us (yes, the entire family rooms with Tok when we are back, even Dad, because there is no one to prepare the spare rooms but Tok will take it to heart if we stayed at a hotel), Dad because of the understandably uncomfortable arrangement of sharing a room with his mother-in-law, on top of his reluctance to be there in the first place, the other relatives for whether they should or should not make a fuss about our rare visits, mother being in a dilemma about how to react to her relatives, on top of trying to balance Dad’s unstable mood. Me I’m generally neutral about things, but I just feel that I’d rather enjoy my holiday rolling around with a drama or two instead of dealing with all the drama, you know.
In short, I’m one of the few people that are completely okay with Raya being cancelled. But the dramas I watched this time around did make me wonder if I’m taking things for granted too much. For instance, in Start Up, Grandma, a fiercely independent woman who brings up a son and then a granddaughter and an errant orphan as a single woman, loses her eyesight and has to learn to rely on others. In You Are My Hero, Special Forces Police Captain Xing Kelei has to deal with a brain tumour that impinges on his optic nerve – which might cause him his vision and thus might strip him of everything that makes him a deadly sniper and a high-flying assault unit commander. And then there’s me, who, instead of living my life, flops around all day long watching drama after drama. It… gave me a pause – if I woke up tomorrow to find that I have lost my vision, what would I do? How will I take that fate – stoically, like Grandma, or with deep vulnerability, like Xing Kelei? I mean – on top of everything else like how would I function professionally and would I be able to continue living alone – and I know this might be the shallowest thing to worry about, but not being able to watch a drama would be utterly devastating, I think. I imagined it, and I thought it’s okay because I actually enjoy reading I’ll just take up braille and… Well, I think taking up braille is good and all, but by God, how beautiful is the world, even my drab little corner of it? And how beautiful is being able to see it?
And it’s not just vision, specifically. There are so many things in life that we, that I, take for granted. The way my body works, the privileges that I enjoy, hell, even the peace of my motherland. It is a sobering thought that all these could be gone in an instant. Throughout Raya, Israel had been bombarding Palestine, and in a truly privileged way, I have been following the development of events halfheartedly. The colonialising Zionists are unfair and cruel, and pity the Palestinians, but the events have been going on since a lifetime ago and it’s halfway across the world and I am safe and snug and because of the movement control order I’m not obligated to go see people during Raya and I’m happy to stay indoors to contribute to breaking the Covid-19 chain. It wasn’t enough that the Zionists were visiting atrocities upon civilians; no, what gave me a pause was the thought that what if my yet-to-be-finished newly renovated apartment was shelled? After I’d spent all that money? Again, another shallow thought, to be sure, but this was what came to my mind first. If my house was destroyed, and basically all my money along with it, what would I do then? I mean logically speaking that seems improbable, but nothing is improbable. No one in history ever saw anything coming.
Like, when the government announced the first movement control order on 18 March 2020 (for some reason, this date is stuck in my head more prominently than some friends’ birthday), did anyone see that coming? We’d heard about this new virus that was making the rounds, but did anyone see that the world would go into quarantine, that international borders would be practically closed indefinitely? Even I initially thought that this was just a stronger strain of influenza, that everyone was just blowing things out of proportions. Obviously I’m not complaining, but the point is – was our expectation any different than when they announced the Great War? It’ll be over by Christmas – who would have expected that we would be still be constrained indoors two Hari Raya Aidilfitris later?
And in the same way that optimism about a brief war quickly faded, I am no longer optimistic about being free to go out in public soon. First of all, I’m an antivaxxer. Usually, I’m an antivaxxer because it works too well and I think we might need a few of us to drop dead, but this time I’m an antivaxxer because I’m not sure of its efficacy. I’m not saying I won’t take it because I don’t think it works – I suppose it does work – but I’m unsure of the long-term side effects because there has not been enough time to study it. How can you know what effects this particular vaccine will have on you 10, 20 years down the line, on your future children, if it’s only be around for like what? 1.5 years? I mean I completely understand why they had to expedite the approval – all I’m saying is I’m wary of it and I’m happy to observe first. After all, I’m a homebody who is perfectly content to be homebound.
But that is another thing that I take for granted: that there will be an expiry date for our isolation. I’m only happy to be indoors because I assumed that one day, and soon, we will be free. But I am no longer confident about that expectation. The Great War stretched out for four years – what if the situation persists for that long? Or even longer? Because I can no longer be confident that it won’t. There is so much world out there – if I died without seeing any of it, except from my little screen, will I be able to forgive myself?
And what’s worse, I have not been treating my body with the love and respect that it deserves. Because why would I? All I need it to do for me right now is to be able to flop around. I have a treadmill and sometimes I try walking or running on it and I just find it pointless. I don’t need to be able to do any of this at the moment, and I’d rather lie down comfortably and watch my stupid dramas. But then, sometimes when I go out for groceries, I find that I tired just from carrying a shopping bag with like three sticks of cucumbers and a head of broccoli. I mean I know I’m not a strong athlete by any margin at all, but I used to be able to hike. And go camping. And drive for hours and hours on end. The last time I went hiking, that weekend before the current semester started, I went to a baby hill basically behind my house and I didn’t even make it to the peak because I feared that I might faint. The one-hour-ish drive to campus, which I sometimes still have to do, would tire my arm out from just steering. Like, how pathetic is that? So I mean, at this rate, even if we are allowed to leave the house, what can I do now? I have allowed my body to waste to this point, but I see no incentive in rebuilding it.
OtakMonyet 