Diary of a coronavirus-positive Kiwi in NYC: Day 13

By Simone Nathan

Diary of a coronavirus-positive Kiwi in NYC: Day 13
Simone Nathan, a Kiwi living in New York, documents life in quarantine as she battles symptoms of COVID-19.

Click here if you missed Day 12, or start from the beginning at Day 1.

Day 13

Ten years ago I left New Zealand because Zomato was putting too much pressure on me to download their app. My dad asked me not to die overseas as it was very expensive to ship coffins home and so far I had kept my promise. By this point of my brush with CV-19 we were confident I would continue to.

Today was the second to last day of my self-isolation and therefore the second to last day of this diary! I still hadn’t regained my ability to smell but could now taste at 10% and was starting to vaguely distinguish between savoury, sweet and sour. I’d found a Twitter thread of people sharing how long they’d lost their smell and taste for and was genuinely moved by the reassurance and solidary I found in it. It was like my very own hyper-specific support group. These were my people now and one day we would form a family band and tour the countryside together singing Edelweiss.

I missed the smell of my cat’s fur and the comfort that food once brought. Although my appetite was greatly diminished I was still eating plenty, telling myself that if I didn’t eat this entire tub of Trader Joe’s artichoke and jalapeño dip in one sitting I wouldn’t be living authentically and being honest with myself about what I wanted, which was to eat this entire tub of Trader Joe’s artichoke and jalapeño dip in one sitting. Each day I sat in my chair (also my bed), wrote, and watched the sun move across the sky, over and over, with only small inconsistencies to distinguish the days. I felt useless, like a pork chop at a bar mitzvah and wondered, like everyone else across the globe, when this would all end.

I wondered what it would have been like to share the quarantine – whether with my family, my old roommate or my boyfriend. I also spent an inordinate amount of time musing on who my ideal famous person to share the quarantine with would have been. I would describe my type as ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ – a fiercely possessive man who would be willing to brush/play with my hair at length, while also ignoring me for hours at a time to send angry letters, play the organ and brood. He and I both know how it feels to be outcasts of society (he’s deformed and I have the virus) and I’m certain I could fix him. Deep down, though, I know our quarantine probably would have ended in him laying a rose on my cold dead body, after I lost my footing trying to scramble out the fire escape.

I’ve failed to mention that I have a brother who lives in the city. He and his wife came over recently to deliver me a gift. When I opened the door there was a coffee machine on my doorstep and they were both standing at the bottom of the flight of stairs, wearing masks, staring at me with fear in their eyes. I suddenly felt distinctly, unmistakably like a rare and dangerous animal who’d emerged from their cave. I took the gift in my claws, nodded my thanks and scuttled backwards into my hovel. I believe that when this is all over, the anxious distance bubbles we’ve all constructed around ourselves will be one of the strangest elements of this ordeal to undo. 

As New Zealand has been busy planning its moves to ‘Level 3’, back towards a fully functioning, though indelibly changed, society, I knew the States would take immeasurably longer. After all, this was a nation who continued to use human feet as one of their main forms of measurement. But for now, I was here whether I liked it or not – so I’d have to keep daydreaming. But first – to watch a video of a man playing ‘Clair de Lune’ to an elephant.

Read Day 14 of Simone’s coronavirus diary here.

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