During this pandemic, the name of the game has been social distancing. For most people, that has meant transforming their lives into a routine that is centered around their homes. These changes to the space we occupy, and the ideas brought forth by a global health pandemic, can shape the ways in which we think about and act on our health and wellbeing. Here are some narratives of social distancing experiences and how the adjustments to smaller or different spaces have influenced perceptions of health.
Sheltering in place in Seattle:
On March 14th, Eve left work to begin her social distancing experience in her Seattle apartment with her toddler. Eve’s routine is centered around work and her son. She wakes up around 7:30am, eats breakfast at 9am, then goes to scattered online meetings until 4pm. She puts on one of her son’s favorite shows to keep him occupied during meetings, but sometimes he will join her and say hello to her colleagues. The two eat dinner at 7pm, and once her son is in bed, Eve stays up until around 2am to finish work. Surprisingly to her, Eve gets less sleep being at home now than before the pandemic and seems to have less time in the day. Eve spends most of the day in the kitchen, living room, and her son’s room and only comes back to her room for bedtime.
“I have my own space in my room, which is nice. It’s separate from everything else.”
The most important aspect of health to Eve during the pandemic is worry that her son will contract the virus without showing symptoms, and that she will get it from him. This is not because they are particularly at risk, but because this puts her out of work and significantly affects her ability to care for her son. Eve actually started social distancing about a week before others at her company due to parental commitments. This experience has made Eve significantly more cautious about the things we touch and how much of an impact that can have on her son’s health and her own.
Now, and as per state recommendation, everything is delivered to the apartment, including groceries, personal items, and new toys. Once a week, Eve and her son visit nearby parks to walk around and get outside, but only go out when it is sunny and over 60 degrees, as weather is a constraint. As an introvert and homebody, the adjustment to the life of social distancing has not been difficult. She Facetimes and texts family and friends, but spends most of her time taking care of her son and working from home.
Building a life in Boston:
For Maddie, adjusting to a life of social distancing means creating a settled routine that structures her days around work and movement. Maddie wakes up to workout in a large parking lot almost everyday to be distant from others. She does work at a standing desk from 9:30am until 6pm, with a midday walk as a break. She does on another walk before dinner, and then talks to friends, reads or watches TV before bed.
Because staying in one place for extended amounts of time causes feelings of claustrophobia and antsiness, Maddie constructed a full routine that reduces anxiety over the chaos and craziness surrounding the pandemic. She is thankful for her roommates that provide a social outlet and human connection; she expressed that being alone in her space, with no voices or human contact is an experience that she would not want to have during this pandemic. She has inserted activities like FaceTiming friends and family, creating “feel-good” music playlists to match her moods while walking, and other active activities in order to boost mood and prevent herself from going “stir-crazy”.
Maddie was also able to do a little planning before sheltering in place because her company gave a week’s notice before switching to remote work. In that time and for another few weeks, she went on walks to see a few friends, and then made the transition to complete social distancing when she saw that things were getting bad. Maddie gauged actions based on what was going on around her, and Boston did not “get bad” until a bit later. Her ability to prepare for the transition provided her with the ability to create a lifestyle that she could manage for a long period of time. Maddie also expressed her prediction that Boston would not be going back to normal for a long time, and that she needed this structure and preparation in order to maintain this lifestyle until next Spring.
Maddie has also thought about her health through ideas of time. The experience of social distancing has led her to think about the ways in which her normal routine was rushed because now, her situation is the opposite. She has significantly more time to do things, and she has felt that slowing down and relaxing for her mental health has been beneficial to think about. In the future, she thinks that she, along with many others, will look back on this time and take efforts to slow down every once in a while in order to maintain mental and physical health. Social distancing, she expressed, has increased our awareness of the impact that our situations have on us and the impact that we have on ourselves and others.
Settling into social distance in Suffolk:
Emily’s social distancing experience has been defined by school, family dynamics in the house, and her identity as an equestrian. Her days are structured by chores, school, riding her horses at the barn, outdoor time, and family dinners. In a house of seven family members, it took time to establish routines and be settled together but with separate spaces. Emily frequently expressed that she is lucky to have her own separate space in her room as well as access to outdoor space. Suffolk is spread out and many of her older neighbors had left to stay with family or stay at their homes in the Outer Banks. Emily’s access to open space has been an outlet that she utilizes for bike rides, walks, or kayaking everyday with her sister to get out of the house and alleviate senses of isolation. Emily also has scheduled times in which she visits her barn to ride her horses in order to maintain their activity.
Through these resources, Emily has maintained her active habits; the source of change in health perceptions for her is the increased awareness of illness and how it spreads, which manifests in her attention to washing hands. She also considers herself as a “people person” and has felt isolated, so she has utilized FaceTime and other modes of communication to stay connected with friends. Emily has found herself more aware of the spaces that she occupies in comparison to others that do not have the same resources and how these spaces have provided her with outlets that maintain her health and wellbeing.
Enclosed in Elizabeth City:
After being sent home from her final rotations as a 4th year medical student in a New Jersey hospital, Jane’s social distancing experience has been defined by readjustment to life in her childhood home and medicine. For the first few weeks, Jane was finishing her last medical school course, so her days centered around attending class while simultaneously watching TV. Jane had hoped that the class would provide structure, but because she was not learning anything in the class and felt as though it was a waste of time, she felt as if she could not establish a set routine. Now that the course is completed, her days consist of preparing for her Step 3 exam, watching TV, baking and cooking, and hoping that her mother will take her on an errand to run. She and her parents walk the dog outside, and she goes to Walmart occasionally to sit in the car while her mother shops, but for most of the day she sits inside.
“I just put a cheesecake in the oven, so that has been happening a lot. Is it healthy? No, but it’s something.”
Jane’s perceptions of health throughout this pandemic have been largely influenced by her experiences as a medical student. She has become accustomed to the lifestyle of avoiding sick or coughing people, especially in the urban hospital in which she works because patients are usually uninsured and come in at their sickest states. She is used to not being in the best environments for her health, but she has been washing her hands more even when she knows her house is clean. Jane has conceptualized this pandemic in ways that have led her to take precautions that may not be necessary in order to maintain her health.
Being in a constrained space has also changed the way that Jane acts on her health. She expressed that she has lost motivation to maintain workout routines because she lacks access to a gym. She also sits in one specific chair in which she feels comfort, but is now getting bored and feels the need to “do something mindless” outside of the house. Jane has the perception that even doing mindless things outside of the house would be better than inside, illustrating how her ideas of space have manifested during this pandemic. She has also spent considerable time with what she calls her “parental units”, naming them as a resource of information, human connection and regression to the days in which she still lived at home. Jane has embodied space that she occupies and the interactions that she has with her parents in the creation of a social distancing experience that influenced her ideas of health and wellbeing.
Conclusion:
These narratives expressed experiences of embodiment of physical space and the social and economic situations that affect conceptions of health and what people are led to think about. Health experiences can be influenced by the situations that we are placed in, whether it be the responsibility of taking care of a small child, or learning to share space in a large household, or managing confinement in a place that takes you back to high school days. The steps that we take in order to ease social suffering are both influenced and dependent on how we perceive our health and how we act on it.
Overall, this pandemic has led people to consider their place in the world and how they perceive their health through their personal experiences and what they have witnessed through media and virtual communication. As Maddie expressed above, this time advances our awareness of ourselves and wellbeing in ways that will be meaningful and defining in the future.
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