Terms and Isolation

I found myself talking to the walls during the lockdown. Not in the way people think—no dramatic outbursts or madness—but in that quiet, desperate way you mutter to empty spaces when the idea of being seen has faded. There’s a loneliness that’s not cinematic. No rain, no music. Just the stale company of your own silence, broken only by the endless ping of emails and notifications.

But those messages weren’t from people. They were from apps, brands, employers. “You’re essential,” they said, while handing me crumbs and expecting gratitude. The virus separated us physically, sure. But the system? The system kept us isolated long after the virus faded, turning our loneliness into a subscription model.

I noticed how every notification wasn’t about connection, but consumption. How grief became a product you could journal through, exhaustion a badge of honor, and self-care a market segment. Capitalism didn’t care if I was broken; it only cared that I kept buying the illusion of healing.

I clapped for frontline workers while billionaires stacked wealth higher than the barriers we faced. I shared posts about solidarity while food couriers braved storms to deliver my meal. Empathy became a performative dance; survival a one-person show without an audience.

I felt the emotional outsourcing creep in. Connection shrank into data points and engagement stats. Rest felt like a sin, solitude a lost art. Even healing became something to track—how many mindfulness minutes did I earn today? How many emotional steps toward “wellness”?

But maybe healing isn’t a metric. Maybe some days are just meant to be empty—unprofitable, unshareable, unproductive. Maybe the soul grows in moments too quiet for Instagram stories.

I miss the me who could sit still without guilt, who didn’t have to monetize silence, who wasn’t afraid of being unremarkable. The pandemic made me lonely, but capitalism made sure that loneliness turned into a product I couldn’t stop consuming.

And then I wonder, what if instead of rushing back to normal, we questioned why normal looked so exhausted, so fractured, so cold?

But the truth settles like dust: normal was never meant for our healing. It was built for our labor.