"Isolate yourselves"
Say it slowly and it will sound like a hip young thing we all need to try but say it very slowly and it becomes a painful blade that's destined to bleed you out and with more than a whimper..
Funny though I used to think of isolation as being sent to my room when I was very young because I misbehaved or my little big mouth had let me down once again and I swore and managed to jump fast enough away from the back of Mammys hand reaching my arse... speaking of funny I always thought I was quick as lightening but it turns out soft Mammy was never going to land her hand across my arse... soft Mammy just let me believe the threat enough to put manners on me
She was right
A little older, isolation became serious when your very best friend smiled at someone else... jesus life was over and tomorrow was a distant future you'd never see. Best friends were everything and you never changed them except twice a week when you arrived late or pissed them off. Yeah they always stayed the same just like socks, until you couldn't find one of them..
You get me, don't you... childhood and survival was vicious, lack of haircuts and never knowing you could actually shave the tress that grew on you suddenly and why is there hair everywhere, you couldn't even lift your arms without hair spouting....
Isolation is when you don't know you can shave that hair and be like everyone else. Isolation is wanting head lice because everyone else has it and wishing you had died because you farted out loud in front of the boy you were destined to marry if only he knew you existed in the first place
Yes we all knew isolation.....
Except we never actually knew isolation. Looking back on yesterday we realise that what we thought was isolation was just life, and childhood, and poverty mixed with love pure without money. And wanting the boy who didn't see you and wondering why the feck watching Dallas was such a huge crime. Sure Sue Ellen never worried about isolation when she was drunk and wasn't sober long enough to be able to spell it.
Our isolation was childish and innocent and yet it was the very thing we assumed would end our life and leave us virgins buying cats for company. We like cats and we weren't overly concerned about being left a virgin, sure our lady got by... they made a statue for her....
But today in 2020 isolation has paided us a visit, tapped us on the shoulder, introduced itself with an evil smile and sat down uninvited. It waits there while we try to catch our breath, compose ourselves and it waits there cynically looking at us. Isolation has a mirror and if you choose to look in it, you will see time. You will see your past, your future and every person you ever loved or lost. Isolation is the young, the old and the sometimes always forgotten. It's the child you were, the parent you strived to be and the cradle you long to climb back into so someone else takes charge
Isolation is the youth being blamed for everything,
It's the old that longs to just reach out and feel skin and feel home
It's the vulnerable wondering why they were marked to be vulnerable
It's the you that suddenly looks different in the mirror, wondering when did your reflection become different to you.. so aged to you
When did people forget the moments they became isolated in a million different ways throughout every step they took from the moment they could walk
When did the world become so frightening that even familiar people have become strangers
Why aren't we all realising that isolation isn't here just because we are in a pandemic. Isolation has sat on our shoulder most of our lives but now as we turn against each other it's become the monster resurrected to haunt us
Is there any way we can return to reaching out to each other, return to remembering each other, return to realising that all we have is each other.
If we do then we can kill isolation.... because isolation has only one way to kill you...
By lonlieness.... it kills everything pure
And isolation has only one cure....
Love... it kills everything evil
Valerie Masters
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