Big City vs. Small Town Part 1 of 5
March 2020 changed the world as we knew it. For those of us living in New York, it changed even earlier than that. I got Covid-19 for the first time in late January 2020. Then, it was a mystery illness, something akin to the flu but with stranger symptoms. For two weeks, I had a fever that never dipped below 100 degrees with the energy of a sloth. After the worst symptoms had subsided, I returned to work in Midtown Manhattan, regaling my coworkers with the slurry of fever dream stories experienced in the weeks prior.
Over the next several months, COVID crippled the city and everyone in it. Businesses started to shutter to contain the spread of the virus. People used to the bustle of morning commutes had to settle for a tiny trek from their bedrooms to their home offices (or, in my case, from one corner of my bedroom to the next). Transitioning to a work-from-home environment impacted everyone but felt significantly tricky for therapists and their clients. Getting accustomed to staring at a computer screen on both ends was interesting and, in true therapeutic fashion, had to be processed on both the part of the therapist AND the client.
Thoughts of hope that life would return to normal began to dwindle and were pitted against a New York blossoming into spring. It was arduous to walk in Central Park, masked up among even the brave few willing to risk leaving their homes. I suffer from terrible allergies, and the slightest bit of pollen would often elicit a sniffle or, God forbid, a sneeze. The sniffle would send sneers from passersby in my direction, and a sneeze, A SNEEZE, would end with people cursing in my direction with warnings to return home.
It’s not that I cannot empathize with their sentiments, but spending MONTHS locked in an 800-square-foot apartment with no outdoor space and little human contact was becoming painfully brutal. The only respite from the drone of the day-to-day monotony was when the clock struck 7 PM. You could be ANYWHERE in the city, and the trickle of people clapping would begin to ascend into an uproar of celebration accompanied by bells, whistles, music, and cheers.
