Inside the Bubble

A contagious disease requires you to be put into quarantine for a whole month (don’t worry, you get well by the time you’re free to go!). How would you spend your time in isolation?

I find this prompt funny. Funny because it is in a way recognizable. I spent my whole life in all sorts of isolation. Now more than ever.

When I was growing up we lived in hundreds of different places, all of them in the middle of nowhere. We were constantly moving my siblings and I never had the chance to have something most people take for granted_ home. Like I said in one of my posts, our roots had been pulled out over and over again before they can even have a chance to settle and get hold. We never had a contingency to grow and flourish in a familiar soil. It is sad but true. It made us the strangers, the newcomers wherever we went. We never had a chance to belong.

Isolation, in my eyes, is the hardest cross to bear when someone inhabits a space in the middle of nowhere. To us siblings, it means growing up not being socially adept. You see, when one is only dealing with one’s immediate family, one doesn’t have to lie and deceive or conform to social rules. The direct result of that upbringing is a bunch of adults who are brutally honest and without inhibition. Reason enough to be different and become outcasts. That, our lifestyle and our parents troubled (sick) relationship with each other ensured that we are all quarantined for the rest of our lives, Not only emotionally and psychologically but from society as well. We simply cannot function normally out there.

It is like being inside a bubble. People can see me, I can see them but we have nothing to do with each other. They will never understand me and I will never understand them. In some way, it is liberating. No expectation means you cannot be disappointed. But how one can totally remove oneself from this world without consequences? The answer is one cannot. So, once in a while I suffer society and it suffers me. I learn to mind my own business, keep a low profile and my mouth shut unless it is really, really necessary to play Rambo, then there is no stopping anymore.

I long accept who/what/how I am and the fact that I will (likely) spend the rest of my life in (self-imposed?) quarantine. The majority always wins. Society will always dictate/set the rules. If you are not part of the herd(mentality) you’re alone. Live with it or jump off the bridge, or like me embrace your uniqueness and remember what Dr. Seuss once said: Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind…