Today, I’m finally able to reënter society after contracting COVID for the second time. This strain in particular is endearingly called “FLiRT,” an apt name for a disease spread through face-to-face contact, the exchanging of droplets, etc. etc.

Both times I’ve contracted COVID, I was the sole person in my party to get infected. The scenarios are eerily similar—I, and a few friends (average: 5.5 people), hit the proverbial town, spending approximately two hours at a single bar after pregaming well beyond necessity. Once there, we neatly assume a circle formation, all facing inward, until one of us is brave enough to make a new friend, or decides that the hour to grab another drink has struck (this is often my reason).

Somehow—in both of these contexts, COVID loomed large and decided I would be its only victim. As a responsible bearer-of-illness, I isolated as quickly as I found out, managing to infect nobody else. My getting ill and subsequent getting better were both incredibly isolated experiences, perhaps the antithesis of FLiRT’s essence.

I don’t know how to read this—is it better or worse that I was the only one? Isolation, for one, certainly feels more isolated without a COVID compatriot.

This time around, I had a profoundly worse experience with the illness than my first time. It crept in slowly, not bearing its teeth in full until the third day of my symptoms. This was a cascade of lightheadedness, chest pain, and generally, “Oh Fuck This Is It. It’s Over.” I quickly typed some variant of “chest pain covid emergency?” into Google and the answer was some variant of “Yes.”

Very quickly I thought about calling for an ambulance. Up to this point I had never called 911—the sole thought of dialing those numbers into my phone felt like a crime. What was an emergency?  Initially, I thought to myself, “Well, we shouldn’t be so dramatic. Somebody probably needs this ambulance.” Then I lied down for a minute. After feeling my chest nearly combust, I decided that I probably needed the ambulance.

The phone rang. I was greeted with an incomprehensible jumble of sounds from the other end that grew increasingly aggressive. This was likely because I kept saying, “What? I can’t hear you.” I was given the option of requesting an ambulance, a firetruck, or a police vehicle. After considering my options for a moment, I decided that an ambulance made the most sense here, despite my really wanting to call the FDNY too. This desire came from deep within, from the reptilian instinct that supersedes my regular brain.

I returned to my bed, where I counted down the minutes. My apartment buzzer was broken and I thought to myself, should I call 911 again, just to clarify and let them know? After entertaining that decision tree, there was a commotion outside of my apartment, with a strong door knock or two promptly following. This WAS the FDNY. I was overjoyed, then confused. Apparently they were just the EMT’s lackeys, checking to see if I could make it down the stairs. There must have been approximately four or five people in total escorting me down the stairwell in my bleach-stained shorts and my Covid-infested Uniqlo Airism tee. I hobbled down the steps, my legs hardly supporting my weight because of the adrenaline rush, not a single person in my posse attempting to help me down.

After entering the ambulance, I was greeted by two very native New Yorker EMTs, mostly identifiable because of their vaguely Italian-American sense of laissez-faire and their vaguely Italian-American accents. The first EMT, less vocal and more nose to the grindstone, proceeded to struggle as he placed the EKG stickers onto my bare chest.

The other, more rugged, EMT told me that I was fine, that people like me, twenty-three year olds, are probably the best equipped to handle COVID. I tried to listen to the words that came out of his mouth while simultaneously thinking that I may be experiencing my final moments on earth. Also on my mind was the fact that my shirt was becoming so damp it resembled a rorschach diagram. My EKG results were clear—I was not having a heart attack.

I’m not sure what it is about my COVID magnetism that isolates me from the rest of my group. I find that as an adult who has graduated college, this isolation is increasingly more common. I didn’t feel trapped in my confinement. It felt much more standard, like this was a regular week, except for the fact that I was working from home. I’m writing this as I attempt to make evening plans—it’s already 7:20pm and the prospect is dwindling. This may be due to a lack of proactivity in setting plans, but frequent are the weeknights where one trudges through as if they have COVID.

The entire experience frightened me to my core. Even in a moment of panicked illness and sickness, I found myself alone. After the whole ordeal, I returned to my work as if nothing of interest had just traversed. I don’t feel that there aren’t people in my life—on the contrary. There are plenty, many of whom I adore deeply. But it is this momentary isolation that can, at time, feel amplified. Alone, there are substantially fewer things to distract one from their condition. Boredom, in my eyes, only occurs when one is alone, and lacks sufficient distraction. 

I think stuff like this is what convinces me more and more that man is inherently social, why we desire romance so strongly, and so on. There’s a particular frigidity that loneliness carries.