Day 21.

Three weeks into my personal foray into quarantine. Some have been doing it longer. Others have just gotten started. For me, it turns out that three weeks is when I start to crumble. A bit. Maybe more than a bit. At least for today.

My first couple days of working from home were perfect in their working-from-home cliche-ness. The soft pants. Unshowered. Teeth unbrushed. A glass of wine with my 3:30 conference call. Slouching on the couch with my laptop perched on my hip, mulling over whether I could finish season 3 of Outlander and still get work done at the same time. It wasn’t sustainable. Not in the least. If I maintained such a lackadaisical approach, I’d be a teary, depressed blob who became one with her couch, never again able to wear real pants, and would likely become swiftly unemployed.

So over that weekend, now an eon ago it seems, I set up a semi-respectable workspace at our dining table and dedicated myself to preserving some semblance of a routine for the duration of this situation that we all find ourselves in. I spare myself the alarm clock of course, because why would one subject themselves to such unpleasantness, but I still wake up before 8am. I go for a run or do an online yoga class. I take a shower. I put on jeans to make sure they’re still fitting. I eat a decently healthy breakfast. I brush my teeth twice a day. I proceed about my workday much the same way I did in the office: in bursts of efficiency punctuated by infuriating dips into the Twitterverse. I am not allowed alcohol before five. But rest assured, that glass of wine or that beer is in my hand by 5:01 p.m. every damn day.

Thusly I have so far managed to fake normalcy during this deeply abnormal new normal.

The other thing that is helping me fake normal is cooking. And while I am certainly getting tired of my own cooking, more often than not, cooking itself is comforting to me. The delicious familiar warmth of a baked ziti with homemade red sauce and an irresponsible amount of cheese. Tangles of pasta full of veggies and garlic, parmesan and butter. Roasted chicken with mashed potatoes and broccoli. White bean and chicken soup with kale. Minestrone. Browned chicken thighs with harissa and couscous. Orzo with shrimp scampi. Rice noodle soup with pork, ginger and garlic. What I want to cook and eat is the moon that continually orbits the main planet of my thoughts.

So far, I have enjoyed the immense privilege of a well-stocked kitchen, replenished by mostly regular grocery deliveries. Sometimes snagging an available delivery time slot has felt like winning the lottery as I make the reservation and fill my virtual shopping cart up with all the perishable and non-perishable items I can get—from chickens to steaks to eggs to bread to cans of beans and boxes of rice and pasta to fruits and veggies, fresh and frozen. As long as I can cook, my logic goes, then it will be okay. As long as I have what I need to make a semi-decent plate of spaghetti, I will mostly be okay.

For the past three days I have checked hourly for grocery delivery time slots. There are none. There is no reason in and of itself why this should worry me to an extreme degree, in that between what I’ve stuffed in the freezer and our shelf-stable staples, we are in no way going to go hungry if we can’t get groceries for two or three weeks, to say nothing of New York’s robust takeout and delivery services, which continue doggedly, heroically to supply our city with dumplings, pizzas, Thai, perogies, cakes, burgers and every other cuisine you could ever crave. Also, if in need, we can suit up and head to the grocery store or our respectably stocked bodega. No, there is absolutely no logical reason why not getting a replenishment of groceries should alarm me, let alone throw me over the side of my little boat, the USS THIS IS FINE, to toss like a hapless cork on stormy emotional seas.

And yet, today, I lost it.

It wasn’t exactly over the FreshDirect app and its little, all-too-familiar “No delivery windows are currently available” pop-up. Not specifically over the quickening obituaries of loved ones lost to this nightmare. Not over the stupefying, appalling lack of urgency or organization from our federal government. Not just over the infuriating stories about Dr. Anthony Fauci needing extra security because of the dumbfucks who think he’s the face of the next great conspiracy to make the president look bad. Not exactly the profiteering assholes marking up their hoarded N95 masks 700% before selling them to desperate hospitals. Not precisely the governors of many states, still firmly in denial of the enormity of this crisis to the detriment of not only their citizens but all of us and our economic well-being—or whatever is left of it for the millions of people suddenly without an income.

It wasn’t one thing I could point to. It was all of it. All of it. All of it. All of it.

All my careful, wobbly little guardrails I’ve put up within this new normal, all my intentional little habits, all my mindful gratitude and willful calm—fucked. Just positively fucked today. Out of nowhere, pecking out a copydeck for a client, I just lost it and started weeping.

Ant asked me what happened while he rubbed my shoulders as I cried. All I could say was “Nothing!” But it was actually everything. And there is nothing he or I or anyone else can do about it.

Rationally, gratefully, we are in a good place. Income is, for the moment secure. We have, as mentioned, food in the cupboards. We have a comfy home, an adorable, sweet dog and each other. We have so much more than so many others who are living through this and I am bottomlessly grateful for the privilege of our life.

But all of that doesn’t make this pandemic, this crisis facing literally all of humanity, less terrifying. We, all of us, are helpless. We can check the boxes. We can wash our hands. We can stay at home. We can, if we have means, donate money and goods to various organizations helping those who need it, to our neighbors and friends who need it. But that is, quite literally, all we can do. In the face of this looming mountain of totally unknowable misery and uncertainty and death, our action options are shockingly, frighteningly limited. Yet this is the mountain we will climb. All of us.

This will not be the last day I lose my shit. My trite little guardrails and habits and creature comforts mean fuck all on the incline of that mountain.

But I hope that there will be more days that I’m stronger. And more than anything, I hope our experience of climbing this fucking mountain together will make us all, in our own way, better humans—better to each other, better to the world, better for ourselves.

We’ll see, I guess.