It is the final day. The culmination of two weeks of isolation comes together during the final 24 hours. It is met with nothing but a boring day and rising anxiety around the desire to get out; life outside the containment is so close.

I can look back upon these 14 days and be met with a mix of emotions: anger, fear, loneliness, sadness, and many others. It would be easy to turn to a purely emotional response to this situation, focusing on a single aspect to devote all of my energy to.

I could do this easily, but for what purpose? What is remotely enriching or beneficial in this?

Throughout these two weeks, I’ve been able to approach life as though I were a philosopher entrenched in their world. When blocked off from the outside, your mind tends to think about what might be going on, what might be out there. It is truly a journey of the mind as your brain turns somersaults over what to value.

Could these two weeks have been different? Of course. Would I go back now and change it? I wouldn’t. You are never able to analyze your state of being, or the state of the world around you when surrounded by distractions.

I know far more about myself from my own mind being a best friend during this time; I feel an ebb and flow with my own state of being that wasn’t there before. It is oddly spiritual.

However, there are essentials that isolation can’t give us; human connection is crucial to our survival as a species, as we are not meant to be alone. Happiness is a duality of comfort with yourself and comfort with others, both of which carry significant weight towards determining a person’s happiness. For me, I had to be void of one to discover the other, something that I think many people need to experience at some point.

It is something that is spawned within the soul at moments where there isn’t space filled around you with the thoughts and opinions of others. You are free of barriers that limit the way we act or speak, ushering us into a false persona. Everyone, in some way, acts differently around different people to appear in a particular way; is this a good thing? When you are only with yourself, your pure nature rises to the surface.

Quarantine has brought countless challenges, discouragements and waves of anger. It has made me get upset at the current state of the world, the actions of others in it, and a general sense of self-pity towards the situation I found myself in. At the end of the day, it is just an opportunity to learn.

It is a sweet conclusion to this 14-day saga of illness, isolation, and self-discovery; the final night alone is a pure feeling of relief that freedom is on the horizon with the coming day.