I Was Having an Existential Crisis Before It Was Cool

As I vomited for the second time, I imagined the force of the vacuum-flush sucking my face right in. Would I be the woman they find with her head stuck in the wreckage of a British Airways toilet?

During the solid hour of turbulence on a one-way flight to Costa Rica, the row of fellow solo flyers next to me felt it was very important to point out we were over the Bermuda Triangle. I wondered if this was a foreshadowing of life to come. Full of uncertainty and belly-aches.

Costa Rica has no army. There are sloths on the banknotes. You greet with one kiss on the cheek, not two and it’s a faux pas to refer to people from the USA as Americans. They are gringos, not Americans. Hummingbirds fly into my apartment that I, one, live at alone and, two, can afford.

One weekend, I went hiking through the rainforest then ended the day on the beach to swim and stretch and eat fruit. It has become a compulsion to be that prick that, unsolicited, preaches about the magnitude of nature making your personal problems feel trivial because living here has often felt like a Disney movie.

Tonight, however, on the designated walk around the block I’ve allowed myself once a day, the streets of San José have an uncanny quality. The opening scenes of a bad, dystopian horror flick. Deathly quiet, deathly empty.

To be stuck in the most disturbing news cycle since 9/ 11 is already unnerving but one that has no face and yet, day-by-day, limits life as we know it is too surreal to put into words. We’ve been globally thrown into exactly the kind of financial and existential limbo I was on the run from and it’s only the beginning.

My self-isolation has involved swinging between being sick with worry about family at home to feeling guilty for obsessing over the terrible fucking timing. The borders are closed, I have a sloppily photocopied slip of paper which tells me my visa is “in process” and I operate in cash with no bank account like a low-level skunk dealer.

So what do you do while you’re alone in a new country and in quarantine from an invisible baddie? Be relentlessly online, of course. This morning I was hysterical with laughter at an only mildly-amusing news story on how gun sales have gone up in the States. I imagined a pink-faced man in a pair of overalls shooting a sawn-off shotgun into the air at coronavirus, “GIT THIS HERE CHINESE PLAGUE AWAY FROM US.” Minutes later my fingers were twitching with rage over an overwrought Facebook thread about dogs catching the virus. A debate which made it sound like it was just weeks until people were gently placing their pets outside to be flattened by the supermarket delivery vans working overtime.

But the absolute dregs of all of this has been The Opinions. My God, the opinions. The ease in which we talk in absolutes — and I include myself in and want to kick myself over this — is frightening. Each analysis nobody asked for becomes a choose your fighter scenario: “Humans are shit and this will be great for the environment, bring on death” versus “Let’s sit at our desks and work until we cough up a lung cos = economy”. Pick one and allow no nuance. Sprinkle in some online-approved buzzwords to scaffold it and stick to your guns. Just don’t dare drag your feet in the grey area or you’ll be pelted with virtual tomatoes.

But it’s the uncertainty that has become the only absolute.

Nobody knows what will prevail in the next weeks, months, or even years. All there is as an anchor, for the time being, is the deafening uncertainty. That and belly-aches.