My treadmill is making me question reality.

30 days in quarantine and I feel like I am staving off madness through travel. Travel via a 32″ screen attached to an oversized treadmill situated in an undersized bedroom. Yet I feel that I am actually exploring other countries. The persuasions our mind will create to survive.

Being a part of the most vulnerable group in this pandemic, I feel so distinctly connected while more alone than ever. But the more blogs and social media posts I read, the more I realize that kids or a partner or a roommate or a properly functioning immune system wouldn’t necessarily make it any better. This situation is a trial. For everyone. There isn’t a single person on this planet who is unaffected by Coronavirus. Tajikistan has zero cases and people were still drawn to panic buying.

We have never been less alone and we have never felt more lonely.

So what is really happening here? Is running along a wooden path in Tasmania surrounded by green and rainwater ponds that much different than seeing it all through a screen? Is talking to our friends for hours on a video chat with wine and dinner so much less connected than in-person over a table?

Yes. Of course it is, all of it. The touch the smell the vibration of the table when we laugh the wind in your hair as you run through a crowded cobblestone street in Croatia. Those things are the joy and they will never be taken for granted again.

I don’t know what is really happening here. I am so out of sorts I don’t even know if this post sounds like myself. My voice feels different, my thoughts aren’t the same. But what an incredible chance to have a new perspective. This time I get to thank more than just MS.