My Experience: Quarantined in New York City

Those who move to New York City often have a similar personality trait in that they crave activity, love intensity, and need a lot of movement.  The city that never sleeps has a pulse that is felt the moment you walk onto that concrete sidewalk, horns blazing, people hustling, and if you don't move with it there will be no remorse from someone knocking you out of the way. When the world stopped due to COVID-19, New York City stopped with it and suddenly, the concrete jungle became a concrete ghost town, leaving with it the shadows of what should be and the haunting that comes with it.

I liked to think of myself as a pretty spiritually advanced, mentally stable 30-year-old. After spending my mid-twenties going through a lot of spiritual work (I'm a Reiki master and Integrated Energy Therapy healer), I thought I had earned the qualities I would guess my friends described me as: happy, optimistic, supportive.  For these reasons, I had started to give up my daily spiritual practices and carried on through the treadmill of life at high-speed. Suddenly, that treadmill stopped, and I was suddenly confronted with some thought patterns I was sure I had left behind with that Reiki teacher certificate.

At first, I was okay with the quarantine, and found myself able to keep up some of the daily distractions that are always available in the city. But as New Yorkers did their part and stayed home, I did, too. Confined in the apartment I share with my boyfriend, the lack of activity, distractions, and movement forced me to look at some parts of my emotional membrane I had been too busy to confront.

As someone who understands meditation and loves being in nature, I was at first confused at the intense difference. In a way, going upstate to ride my horse or going to take a hike in the Adirondacks, while restorative and healing, is a distraction in itself. You are so able to leave your daily life and going to a place of peace was easy. For these reasons, being in New York City and trying to find an inner stillness was profoundly difficult.  And to avoid the negative thoughts, I found any reason to go to the local bodega more than usual, basically ignoring the positive Instagram posts about finding meaning within the confinement. With the city shut down, I continued to hang onto the kinetic energy that usually hangs around New York. But as the streets got quieter, my restlessness got louder.

Then suddenly, I felt like I was hit by the garbage truck that speeds down Lexington Avenue, as I collided with the areas of my life I had been neglecting because it was easier to ignore than confront. I called some of my friends to find out how they were doing mentally through this situation. While most of them who live out of Manhattan said they were finding ways to adapt, I learned that my New Yorker friends were just like myself and having a really hard time.

After what was certainly an emotional breakdown, I had a breakthrough. Finally, I was able to connect with the positivity and the stories I had heard on the news or read online. In the most hectic city on the planet, I was able to do what four weeks ago I thought would be impossible: find a way to go deep, dive into my darkest parts, and figure out what was working and what no longer was working. My anger at the virus turned into gratitude, as I realized by staying so busy, I was losing my inner core completely. I realized I had lost my goals and had no idea anymore who I wanted to be. Through moving to the loudest city, I could drown out the parts of myself I refused to listen to. And through the eerily silent streets of Manhattan, I realized how important it is to do this on a continuous basis or the thoughts will catch up to you. If you try to run from that negative voice inside your head, the more you run, the more disruptive it will be when it catches up to you.

In the famous Sinatra song, one line is true: 'If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.” But I think we can add a line to the song: If you could make it confined in a New York City apartment and use the time to find some self-reflection and meditation, you can use what felt like as a disaster into a life-changing opportunity. And more importantly, as a lesson to how important it is to cut away the distractions and find time to go to the areas of your psyche, hidden away, that are easy to ignore. New Yorkers are tough! And now, I have more of an appreciation of how they get to be that way.