Autoethnography on Life in Quarantine

Those Who Wear the Mask and Those Who Don t Life in a Time of Quarantine
Introduction
The quarantined life can be voyeuristically experienced via social media or by way of any number of the various videos submitted to Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, YouTube or Twitter by celebrities seeking to share with the world how they themselves are getting on during a time of lockdown. Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Fallon interview friends from their computers at home and post them for our entertainment, and generally the overall feeling that one has is that in spite of the “serious” nature of the event, life in quarantine is like one big slumber party, where people stay in their pajamas, talk to friends using Zoom, play games, and while away the time reconnecting with family at home. In short, it sounds like an extended and much-deserved holiday for everyone. No problem, right? Then again, what happens when the camera is turned off and the audience goes back to reality and all the pressing cares and concerns that go along with it: when will I get to leave, what will life be like out in the world once we all do go back to school and work, what if the pandemic gets worse and we can’t get any food, what if I lose my job over this…? Those are the fears and worries that linger, that do not go away, that are waiting for everyone when the “fun time with friends” sessions end on Zoom and one is left with oneself for what seem like endless stretches of time. This autoethnography is a qualitative exploration of the subculture of the quarantined life. It shows how things are different and how my own personal life has been affected by it. It also shows how identities are shaped by the subculture of the quarantined life and how we come to know ourselves in a new way based on this experience.
My Situation
I started out in this situation completely on the wrong foot. I was actually already travelling when things started getting serious. I was heading to Key West to see family and while there were no rules or regulations in place anywhere, things were beginning to change. But there had not been any cases of the virus reported in the Keys, so we figured it would be safe. I arrived home from Key West on March 21st, after restaurants in Fort Lauderdale had already been closed. Everything at the airport was closed except for a Burger King and a convenience store or two. It was as though while I was on vacation with my family a zombie apocalypse had happened and the whole world was now in hunker-down mode. It was very eerie just being out and about in the airport with it being so empty. I felt like I was violating a social norm and being inconsiderate by even being there—but what could I do? We had to get home to Jersey. Even the bridge into Key West was closed to visitors by the time we left for home—so we knew that flying back to Jersey things were going to be different but we just did not know how different. Yet once we did land and get home safely it was with a great sigh of relief, as though by being at home we were at last safe and secure from the swirling chaos going on outside in the world.
However, as I would soon come to learn, even at home you can lose that sense of safety and start to feel entombed. I will explain how this happened, but first I have to describe my situation at home.
I live with my mother in our home in Jersey—and usually we are not all together at the same time. She has a job and I go to school and work in a diner, so it is not like we are constantly around one another normally. I have a dog, too, and a boyfriend—but aside from that it is pretty much just us. Life before the quarantine would find us both busy at our respective work—but now with both of us at home, life is suddenly very different and I found it difficult to cope.
First off, school is not something that should be attempted from one’s bed—but that is how it went with me when classes suddenly went online. It was difficult to take it all that seriously: the environment was not conducive to serious study and focus, and opening your laptop and connecting to an online lecture while still in your pajamas does not exactly put you in the most studious of mind frames. Some people may be able to do school from home, but I quickly realized that I am not one of those people. I need a campus, a classroom, a teacher, and a desk: I need to feel like I am immersed in the environment—otherwise I will just hear my bed calling to me and I will respond accordingly by lying down in it and drowsily tuning out the lecture that I am supposed to be listening to on the computer.
To make matters worse, I hear my mother’s phone conference calls with her colleagues. Since everyone is now working from home, everyone is on the phone constantly and it has been very distracting for me. How can anyone concentrate when there is a never ending work conversation going on across the hall and you have to hear every word of it? Obviously, this whole quarantine issue snuck up on everyone and it is not like anyone has had time to adjust, but I quickly worried that I did not know how long I would be able to take living in such close quarters with my mother 24/7. I love her and enjoy her company—but I have never been in my life (except when I was a small child) in her company for this long of a stretch of time. The only break we had from one another was when I would take the dog for a walk or when my boyfriend would come over to see me. Usually, would take the dog to the park for a walk—but eventually New Jersey closed the parks, too.
That takes us to my boyfriend. Before anyone accuses me of violating social distancing norms I have to say that my boyfriend never went anywhere except here to see me, so I knew he was not being exposed to the virus at any time. However, I was still working at the diner, which still accepted takeout orders. And, as I will soon explain, I began to feel less and less safe there because it seemed that social distancing guidelines were not being respected.
The Quarantine Subculture
As this is a new mode of existence for everyone, the rules and social norms are not quite established—but there are certainly expectations that some people (such as myself) have and that I increasingly wanted to see others follow. My situation at work, for example, is a point to consider. Most restaurants, so I am assuming, are following social distancing norms and not allowing anyone to be within six feet of anyone else. If a customer comes in to order carry-out, he should do it from a safe distance—and not come to make himself at home at the counter, where he will sit and drink his coffee while he waits for his food and talk about how the coronavirus is “dumb” and a big hoax—which is what was happening at my diner!
One of our weekly customers would always come in to sit at the counter and talk to us about his feelings on the virus. He would say, “This whole coronavirus thing is so stupid, it’s just the flu and all people have to do is take care of themselves and they’d be fine. Some chicken noodle soup and hot tea would do the trick, but they run off to the hospital and the hospitals have been told not to treat but to put them on ventilators, and what happens next? They all die because people aren’t supposed to be on ventilators—but off they run like a bunch of lemmings, thinking they’re going to be saved but there’s Health and Human Services saying, ‘Don’t let them breathe, they’ll spread the coronavirus!’ so they just kill ‘em all!’ No we’re supposed to sit around and do what? Twiddle our thumbs because the ninnies that run this state won’t let us have any fun? Everyone’s scared of their own shadow now!” He would talk and talk and talk, unaware that he was making all of us (or at least me) very uncomfortable. Another older gentlemen would come in, and he showed a bit more awareness, but even he would say: “Can I just get some toast to eat and then I’ll leave?” and in my head I would be thinking, “Why are you guys being ignorant? You should be playing it safe especially because you are elderly!” But they did not seem to care or even believe that a pandemic was happening all around them. My anxiety meanwhile was going through the roof, and I would spend my entire shift wiping everything down with disinfectant.
It always astonished me, however, that the older people were the ones most desperate to get out about their routine lives and be sociable and ignore social distancing rules. It might have been that they were lonely and had no one at home. For the most part, though, they seemed to dismiss all the warnings as though they were truly idiotic. They dismissed the news as fake news and they dismissed the governor as a moron and they acted like everyone else was inconveniencing them, whereas I felt that they were being very inconsiderate by not following the rules and trying to stay safe. I began to see every older person in a negative light and I wondered if they were all being that way because they were senile or just curmudgeonly. Stereotypes exist, I know, because of pre-conceived ideas that are formed for a variety of reasons and propagated and perpetuated through groups and individuals. It is easy for us to express ageist beliefs because we are trained by media and peers to think poorly about the elderly. When they get too old, we ship them off to old folks homes (where they are now being abandoned by the “essential” workers who are supposed to be caring for them). Every day is another horror story about bodies being found here and there of old people who have been left to die because people are afraid of getting near them or catching the coronavirus. Truly, the paranoia level has affected everyone. Still, people tend to view their own groups better than they do others, which is probably why I was willing to accept my boyfriend into my house during this time. The reason for this is that we have a sense of pride in our group as Hilton and Von Hippel (1996) point out. We participate in social groups that are acceptable to us, and those that we have formed preconceived notions about we tend to avoid.
Another example illustrates this principle well: another elderly customer came into the diner. She was wearing a mask but she was talking about her daughter and telling me how her daughter had the coronavirus. I was shocked and felt very uneasy. The woman then told me that her daughter had still come over to visit her but that they had sat outside on the porch and had kept their six feet of distance. I was now physically feeling ill: this old person might be spreading the virus to me, now! I thought. And from that moment on, I felt flushed and feverish and became hyper-aware of every sensation in my body, wondering if it was a sign that I was now infected. My mother and boyfriend tried to tell me that I was overreacting, but I even started wearing a mask at home and staying in my room and not coming out. I told my boss that I was not coming into work anymore because I did not feel safe there and I felt like my world was collapsing on me. I even went to do the drive-thru testing, which I thought gave back results immediately—but no. A nurse came out in a full body suit covered head to toe to take my temperature which turned out to be a low grade fever which threw me into more of a panic attack and after I told them I was an “essential” worker and that I had recently traveled, they told me I qualified for the test and then that it might be a few days before I got the results. I was so anxious the entire time—but when the results came (sooner rather than later) I was so relieved to see that the results were negative! This experience really showed me how powerful your mind is and what anxiety can do to you because I really felt like I was dying. My anxiety did not go away, however, and I began to feel a large lump in my throat and I began Googling my symptoms and it seemed that I had develop globus sensation! Now I am afraid that I have turned into a hypochondriac over this and yet others are going about living their lives and complaining about the social distancing rules and the closures and acting like it is all a bunch of nonsense, while I am sick with fear and have felt like I was dying even though I was not even sick at all! This quarantine has made me feel like I am going crazy.
Conclusions
I have since started seeing the world as full of two types of people: those who wear the mask and those who do not. Using Social Identity Theory (SIT) can help to explain why I look at the world in this manner. SIT posits that individuals develop a sense of who they are based on their group membership. So if a person belongs to a group, like a counter-culture group such as punk rockers, the person’s identity and sense of self will be shaped by his sense of belonging to that group. A Communist’s sense of identity will stem from his belonging to the Communist Party. However, identity can also be formed by seeing what one is not—i.e., not a member of another group, which is typically viewed as less favorable to one’s own group. SIT is also a way that people can put themselves in a position of superiority or inferiority to other groups (Branch et al., 2018). As Branch et al. (2018) note, SIT can be used to show “why individuals seek to place themselves within or outside particular social groups and may suggest why some individuals could be more vulnerable” to attacks from other groups (p. 11). With this in mind, the concept of social identity can be used to explain why some people identify one way and identify others in a different light. Ultimately it is about self-preservation and self-promotion. As McLeod (2008) notes, social groups are a source of pride and self-esteem, so it just makes sense that one would score one’s own group as better than another group. One wants to feel good about oneself and the group to which he belongs and by which he identifies.
For me, I have come to feel that the quarantine subculture has been very divisive for the larger culture because there are those who buy into the need for quarantining (like I do) and those who do not. Some people will be eager to get back to work when the lockdown is lifted, but I am wondering how people will be able to do it because out in the real world the two groups of people are going to be mixing and mingling. I am either going to have to give up self-identifying as a mask wearer and start thinking of us all as being part of the same group once more, or I may have to get therapy—seriously!
I never expected this quarantine to lead me to this conclusion but it seems I am very sensitive to the rules and regulations that health officials put out for us to follow. Yet others are not and they seem to have a great deal of disdain for those same officials. I am not sure if it is even a generational divide, or a gender divide. It seems to be a divide based on risk tolerance.
Works Cited
Branch, S., Shallcross, L., Barker, M., Ramsay, S., & Murray, J. P. (2018). Theoretical Frameworks That Have Explained Workplace Bullying: Retracing Contributions Across the Decades. Concepts, Approaches and Methods, 1-44.
Hilton, J. L., & Von Hippel, W. (1996). Stereotypes. Annual review of psychology,  47(1), 237-271.
McLeod, S. (2008) Social Identity Theory. Simply Psychology. Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/social-identity-theory.html