Quarantine of the Heart

 

When the world closed its doors and locked itself behind masks, I thought I had already been living in quarantine long before anyone spoke the word. My heart had been sealed off the moment he left, and now the world mirrored what I felt inside. Isolation was no longer just an inner reality—it became a global truth. Suddenly everyone was afraid of closeness, afraid of touch, afraid of breathing the same air. For me, that fear had already taken root. The virus outside only confirmed what I had been living inside: that love can be dangerous, that contact can break you, that being with another can end in abandonment.

The streets grew empty, and I found myself walking through them like a ghost. The few people who passed wore masks that covered their expressions. It struck me then: I no longer recognized the world, and the world no longer recognized me. I was just another masked figure in a city of masked figures, hidden, faceless, nameless. If before I felt invisible, now invisibility became law.

At first, I tried to fight the silence with noise. I played music loudly, as if filling the apartment with sound could trick me into feeling less alone. I kept the television running, the news scrolling endlessly about numbers, infections, restrictions, deaths. But soon I realized the noise only deepened the emptiness. The virus outside was terrifying, yes, but the virus inside me was worse. It was the loneliness that multiplied, spread, and consumed every corner of my being. Quarantine of the heart is more suffocating than quarantine of the body.

Days blurred. I stopped keeping track of dates. Morning or night, it did not matter. I woke up and sat by the same window, looking out at the stillness of the street. Sometimes I saw delivery workers rushing with bags, masked faces bent forward in exhaustion. I envied them, at least they had purpose, a reason to move. My purpose seemed to have dissolved with his leaving. Work opportunities dried up—projects canceled, clients disappeared, money dwindling. Each morning I opened my laptop hoping for an email, but my inbox was as empty as my bed. The crisis outside became an echo of the crisis inside.

I called friends at first. They answered politely, voices tight with their own fears, but slowly the calls grew shorter, less frequent, until they stopped altogether. Everyone was drowning in their own small boats, too busy keeping afloat to throw a rope to me. I could not blame them, but the abandonment cut deep. Loneliness is one thing; being forgotten is another, and it burns far worse. My sister had moved to another part of the city months before, and during the pandemic it felt as though she had moved to another world. Days turned to weeks without a single message. I scrolled through her photos online, smiling with her new neighbors, her new life, and realized I was no longer part of her circle. She had her own quarantine, her own survival, and I was no longer inside it.

I turned more often to prayer. The nights were long, and my words spilled into the darkness. I did not ask for miracles—I asked for strength. I asked for meaning. I asked that my heart not harden completely. Because that was my fear: that in building walls to protect myself from pain, I would block out love forever. Quarantine keeps you alive, but it also keeps you untouched. My heart, too, became untouched—safe, but suffocating.

Sometimes I tried to imagine him in quarantine, wherever he was. Did he sit in another apartment, staring at another window, missing me? Or had he filled the silence with someone else’s laughter, another woman’s warmth? The thought tormented me. It was easier to picture him gone completely, vanished from the earth, than to imagine him sharing intimacy with another while I sat alone. But imagination is cruel, and my mind betrayed me daily with images I could not erase. Love may die, but memory refuses to.

Music was my only refuge. I picked up the accordion more often, letting the keys carry what my voice could not. I played not for an audience, not for applause, but for the walls, for God, for myself. The melodies were uneven, sometimes breaking in tears, but they were honest. And in those moments, I felt alive again, if only for a breath. Music became the prayer my words could not form.

I tried to draw, too. My hands sketched faces—lonely, masked, distorted. I sketched my own reflection, though I barely recognized it. The woman on the page looked tired, older than her years, with eyes that seemed to have lost their shine. Still, I kept drawing, as if by capturing my grief on paper, I could contain it.

And then there were the nights. Nights in quarantine are merciless. The world sleeps, but you remain wide awake, battling your demons in silence. I lay in bed, scrolling through my phone, watching couples online cooking together, laughing together, making silly videos of their “lockdown adventures.” It stabbed me each time. For them, quarantine was inconvenience. For me, it was a mirror of the void I already carried.

One evening I thought about writing to him. Just one message: “Are you okay?” My finger hovered above the screen, but I could not press send. Because the truth is, I did not want to know. If he was fine, it would mean I was the only one broken. And if he was not fine, what could I do? Comfort him as if we were still us? No. The silence was cruel, but it was also honest. And I had to honor that honesty, no matter how much it tore me apart.

As the months passed, the news grew darker. Hospitals overwhelmed, people gasping for air, loved ones saying goodbyes through screens. Death had never felt so near, and yet I was already living with a death—the death of us, the death of my old life. Perhaps that is why I did not fear the virus as much as others did. My fear was not of losing breath but of losing hope. What is the point of survival when your soul is already suffocating?

But even in that suffocation, a small voice whispered: survive. It was faint, but it was stubborn. Maybe it was God, maybe it was the remnants of the woman I used to be, maybe it was simply the instinct not to disappear. I clung to that voice, fragile as it was. I told myself: if I can endure this, I can endure anything. If I can endure this quarantine of the heart, then one day, when the doors open again, I will step outside with a soul that knows its own strength.

There were days I failed. Days I did not get out of bed, days I did not shower, days when food was a luxury I could not care for. But even those days passed. I counted them not as defeats but as battles in a war. And in war, survival itself is victory. Quarantine taught me that surviving, even poorly, is still surviving.

Slowly, I began to find rhythm. A prayer in the morning, a song in the afternoon, a journal entry at night. They were small rituals, but they anchored me. They gave shape to the endless days. And through them, I began to hear myself more clearly. My desires, my wounds, my truths. For so long I had been defined by “us,” then by the absence of “us.” Quarantine forced me to face “me.” It was painful, but it was also necessary.

The heart in quarantine is a fragile thing. It beats slower, afraid to hope, afraid to love. But in its quiet rhythm, it learns something invaluable: it learns patience. I am learning to wait—not for him, not for a replacement, but for the day I can open my heart again without fear. The day I can trust that love may wound, but it also heals. The day I can give without trembling, receive without suspicion. Until then, I sit with my solitude, uncomfortable but honest, suffocating but real.

Yes, the world one day will reopen. The masks will come off, the streets will fill, laughter will return to the cafés. But for me, the greater reopening must happen here, inside this chest. Until then, I live in this quarantine of the heart, learning slowly, painfully, that silence is not only prison—it is also preparation.

And maybe, just maybe, when the doors of my heart finally open, I will find that what awaited me was not the echo of the past, but the promise of a new beginning.