Opinion

Tell us what life is like for you in self-isolation

For many Canadians, the coronavirus pandemic has been one of the most life-disrupting events in recent memory. Share your story with us.

It’s likely that you’ve been at home for weeks now. With your partner, your children, your housemates or whoever else you’ve decided to hunker down with. There’s no escape. These weeks of self-isolation during the coronavirus pandemic may be the ultimate test for relationships and at-home dynamics. But you’re not alone in your frustration. Nearly everyone in the country is going through a variation of the same situation. So, we want to hear what self-isolation and the #stayhome era has been like for you, whether you’re in close quarters with loved ones or stranded far apart. Submit up to 200 words below about your experience for a chance to be featured on Macleans.ca.

Here’s an example:

When we moved from condo to house last fall, this place felt massive, in space, yes, but also in backyard barbecues, park afternoons and slow strolls to school. Today I feel robbed of all those, even space itself as the walls close in, but we have something else: time, all day and all night, and then again tomorrow, until July, maybe. Naturally everyone’s under everyone else’s skin: my husband simply cannot deliver a mug to the dishwasher, which I overload every time; spilled snacks and stuffies clutter every corner, no matter how hard I try to clear them, which I do less and less as the days pass. Instead, between sadder and tenser hours, I notice we play —really play—in a way we didn’t before. There just wasn’t time to, say, decorate the shed as a butterfly sanctuary. Yes, we’ve spent hours and hours applying birch-tree wallpaper, sticking 3-D butterflies in every colour, and gluing glow-in-the-dark stars to the ceiling. It’s a six-by-eight-foot shed that (just barely) fits us all and, comparatively, makes the house feel huge.

Rosemary Counter, Toronto

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