Issue 11: Pandemic Check-In
How it started/how it's going.
Ursula: Kurt, hello! As we write this on a Monday evening, you’re drinking coffee and I’m drinking a beer, which I feel really encompasses the spirit of this past year. What time is it? Where are we? What are we doing with our lives?
Kurt: And you know what, I still don’t know! After this past year, there really aren’t any rules anymore. Drink coffee at night! Have a morning beer! Eat Twizzlers and popcorn for every meal! Who cares?! NO ONE.
But I think we’re burying the lede here, because WE SAW EACH OTHER IN REAL LIFE! For the first time in over a year!
Ursula: WE DID! We hugged and laughed and gossiped and it was the BEST.
Kurt: Which brings us to our topic this issue. Now that more and more of us are getting vaccinated in the States, we thought we’d take a look at how our lives are now, and what—if anything—we learned along the way.
Here’s a fun thing that happened: Gil and I broke up with our partner! That relationship was honestly full of some of the nicest moments of the lockdown. The three of us functioned like a true family through so much of it. I think I went into a lot of this in our issue on polyamory, but suffice it to say as the pandemic year went on, it became very clear that Gil and I were on one trajectory and our partner was off on his own, flaunting his disregard for simple rules (wear a mask in public, keep your pod safe, don’t sleep around, etc.). Somehow he couldn’t commit to any of it, and felt it was inevitable that everyone would get COVID eventually, so why worry about it?
Ursula: Ugh, that SUCKS. You made the right decision, obviously, but what an ordeal. How are you and Gil doing now, both with regards to the breakup and in general?
Kurt: I think it’s a testament to our relationship that Gil and I have adapted to seeing each other's faces every single day for the past fifteen months and still think we’re the cat’s pajamas and bee’s knees, respectively. We have a great routine in place for working. And having to go through this breakup together—our first as a poly couple—definitely strengthened our relationship. We now have a better idea of what we want out of our future partners, and hooo boy was that relationship not it.
Ursula: JD and I are stronger, too. The first several months of the pandemic were hard. I was scared and lonely, and became pretty emotionally needy, which is unusual for me. Suddenly JD was gone for what felt like days at a time, coming home exhausted and not as equipped to take care of me as he typically would have been—and I don’t blame him! It was just an odd feeling for me to need him so much, where in the past, I’d prided myself on my self-sufficiency. By late spring last year I was a quivering mass of confusion and anxiety, desperate for someone to hug me.
It became very obvious to me how much the pandemic had affected us in November, when I unexpectedly had to leave town for a few weeks to help my mom while she was recovering from a broken arm. In the past, when JD and I were apart for long periods, we’d text regularly, maybe talk on the phone once or twice in a week, but that was it. This trip was different. We spoke every day on the phone—sometimes more than once—often for hours. We were both feeling pretty adrift without one another. It was weird, but also comforting, like real-time confirmation of the importance of our marriage.
Of course, it made all the difference that JD and I were already a strong couple before the world fell apart. We’ve seen the stories about people getting divorced during the pandemic because it magnified the ways their relationship wasn’t working. Small issues—or issues that you might choose to overlook in normal times—can become huge, irreconcilable problems during a crisis.
Kurt: It also helped that Gil and I spent almost every waking moment with each other the first year we were together, so we already knew we were fine with each other's eccentricities. But I can easily see how for some people, those kinds of small issues only intensified during this incredibly stressful time.
Ursula: Totally—and it’s doubly weird because a crisis like this can change your own habits, too! At the start of the pandemic, I was briefly inspired to go full housewife, because I was working from home and JD was out there being an actual frontline. Like so many people, I started baking bread (not sourdough, though, fuck that). I made my own disinfecting wipes out of rags, dish soap, and rubbing alcohol. I got pretty adept at sewing face masks out of old shirts.
Kurt: Wow, I don’t think I realized how domestic you became during the pandemic! One of the great things that came out of our former relationship was my rediscovery of my love of cooking. For years I was definitely cooking-adjacent: partnered with people who were into cooking, or making meals for myself that were kind of basic—a level above instant ramen I’ll say. But Gil and our partner were both great cooks, and they took me under their wings, and I found more confidence in my own cooking skills!
Ursula: Me too! JD used to be the de facto chef in our house—it’s hard to compete with someone who worked at a diner in college. During lockdown I started cooking a lot more, and brought a lot of new recipes into my repertoire. I watched Salt Fat Acid Heat and it sort of changed my life. No disrespect to my husband, but I honestly think I’m the better cook at this point. I can’t wait for him to read this and find out.
Kurt: God I adore SFAH! This past Thanksgiving we made a truly incredible dinner based on Samin Nosrat’s recipes.
Here’s another cool thing that happened (but seriously this time): We bought a house! What! Yes, it’s true. This decision was a long time in the making, but throughout the pandemic, we felt ourselves growing weary of living the condo life. I’m sure living in close proximity to so many other people had something to do with it. But now we have a place that is entirely ours. We have a basement! We have an outdoor space! We have sweet neighbors that bring us cookies and pie!
Ursula: JD and I are seemingly eternal renters, but we were also able to move to a new, bigger apartment last summer, and it helped us get through the scariest days of COVID so much better. We both have our own offices now, which is an improvement from the days of me working in the corner of the dining room in our little one-bedroom. We have a porch, which made last summer infinitely more tolerable. And we adopted a third cat. If you follow me on Instagram, you already know about Malcolm, but he truly helped me get through the winter.
On that note...how’s everybody’s mental state these days? We’ve been talking about some of the good things that happened during, or because of, the pandemic, but I don’t want it to sound like we’ve been having the time of our lives.
Kurt: I think I mentioned in a previous issue that Gil and I got on antidepressants when lockdown started. It helped us both so much. Gil decided to go off of them a few months ago, but I don’t think I’ll quit them for a while. My meds make me feel so much calmer. Hard to go back to that old non-medicated mindset. Also, I discovered that condo living was adding a ton of stress to my daily life. Condo board meetings, renovations, neighbor drama—it was all a huge weight on me that lifted the moment we spent the first night in our new home.
Ursula: Yeah, I increased my Lexapro dosage for a while, when it felt like COVID was just never going to end and I didn’t know who would win the presidential election and it seemed like every day brought a brand new kind of horror. You know, regular stuff.
Kurt: On a similar note, I’m thinking of upping my meds now that lockdown is over. Being back amongst society—even fully vaccinated—is more than I can handle some days. But I also realize how lucky Gil and I were through this past year, breakup notwithstanding. There were couples that wound up getting stuck in different parts of the country and couldn’t return home for months and months. Friends that lived alone, friends that were immunocompromised, friends that live in communities that are historically undervalued. So I get that by comparison we had a pretty easy time with our pandemic living!
Ursula: Same for us, and I don’t want to lose sight of that! Friends of ours got COVID, lost loved ones, lost jobs, got divorced. By the same token, there are people in my life I’ll never look at the same way again—the ones who never took the pandemic seriously, or thought masks were just too inconvenient, or simply HAD to travel cross-country to see family for the holidays. I try to be fair and understanding, but the pandemic really shattered my trust in humanity in a way that I’m not sure can be repaired.
Kurt: I feel this IN MY BONES. It is hard to go back into the world and just...trust that people are being honest about how they spent their lockdown and their vaccination status. Fortunately, I trust my friends and family—aside from some outliers, of which there were few, but the less said about them the better. And aside from the messiness toward the end, our poly pod had some of the nicest moments I recall from the lockdown.
Ursula: I’ve seen a ton of pandemic engagements and teeny-tiny pandemic weddings on social media, which is incredibly romantic. Maybe this is cheapening things a bit, but it kind of reminds me of war weddings—people making a marriage happen, in the midst of a lot of pain and fear, both out of a real devotion to one another and, obviously, for very practical reasons. There’s nothing like a pandemic to make you realize you’d love to get on your partner’s health insurance plan.
Readers, we’d love to hear how the pandemic has affected your relationships. Feel free to write to us or respond in the comments. In the meantime, here are some resources for COVID information and mental health support, should you or your loved ones need them:
Kurt: Now get out there and live your Hot Girl Summer the way god intended: by staying inside as much as possible because the outside world is terrifying! Till next time, readers!
