How to be at Home, the short film that illustrates the difficulties of isolation

Isolation day number 125. Or maybe 126. I’ve lost count. In these months of pandemic at times it seems to me to be in prison, the traffic light of the regions that marks my hour of social air. In prison without guilt but with knowledge of the facts: I am there because I know that it is what is right to do now, because it is my contribution to fight the virus, yet every more day of red on the calendar is an extra day of loneliness that weighs me down.

Ten years ago the petess Tanya Davis wrote How To Be Alone, a guide to transforming loneliness into a moment of discovery and enjoyment of one’s being, illustrated by Andrea Dorfman. Today this poem fits into modern times and becomes How To be at Home, a new composition by Davis, which Dorfman has transformed into a delicate and beautiful animated short that tells the difficulties of isolation and suggests how to deal with it in a positive way.

Below you will find the text in Italian, to be reread whenever you need it, to feel less alone. Take care of your mental health 💘
Like staying at home

If at first all you feel is terrible anxiety, wait. It’ll get worse, and then you’ll get used to it. Maybe. Start with the most common feelings: discomfort, lack of attention, the sadness of feeling alone. When they attack you, you can try yoga, turn off the radio, text a friend or relative or colleague. You can’t get out so it’s a safe space for you to move around.

You can also try the gym, you can’t go there but you can pretend to be there by exercising alone in the room. Public transport is better left alone, but prayer and meditation are always available, and if you feel a pain in your chest because your anxiety does not leave you alone, take a deep breath.

Start with simple things, things that you know you can easily manage and that you know are right for you, for your interests, for how they make you feel and to compensate for what you need. I miss bar lunches so much that I’ve started eating pickles and toast while on the phone.

When you are tired of feeling alone, cook a nice dinner, without inviting anyone. Add a little green and a little orange, fries are fine but they won’t give you the right boost. Feed your heart if people are your favorite energy source, I know the feeling of slowly dissolving into your loneliness.

Watch a movie in the dark and pretend that there is someone next to you and when it ends read all the credits, because you have time you have time but also to remember how many people it takes to tell a story, to make a frame move. Dance like you’re in a club where you know everyone. Everyone is dancing with you and around you, there is your favorite song, the bass thunders and the drums beat loudly in time with your heart, and you feel you are in the right place and throw your hands in the sky as you indulge in all of this.

When you lower them back comes the sadness, the disappointment, the knowledge that the truth is that you can’t go dancing, in any club or party, now you can’t. It breaks your heart, this pain, goes to keep the older ones company, deep down. You can go with him but please don’t stay too long with them: leave like after a visit to old friends. If you can, take a breath of air, breathe and maybe hug a tree: don’t be ashamed, it’s as if you are hugging your friend, your mother, your love. It’s a living thing to rest your cheek on.

Leave the benches sadly half-empty, and as you grind from lack of company appreciate how strangers keep a polite distance, greet your neighbors, savor the depth of your conversation, the nuances that unfold in this strange moment in which we find ourselves .

Society is afraid of change and no one wants to die, neither now for a small virus nor a tomorrow for the world that is on fire, but death is a certainty that we hate to know is part of life, and that awaits us all. We are all intertwined but at the same time distinct like threads of the weave of a fabric, there to unravel at any moment and yet each one focused on itself like a planet that rotates on its own axis and forgets to be part of a galaxy

This is where our fall from grace arises, from the kingdom of mortals or from the divine one it does not matter, the disaster is that we think we are separate but we are not, as shown by this virus that has dismantled societies and the loneliness generated by lack of sharing, something so concrete that it can be measured in the embrace of an individual.

If this undoing operation destroys you, if the absence of people devastates you, if the touch of others was the thread that held you together and now that it has been cut you are too fragile, embrace this loneliness and be aware that you are not in it. alone. Abandon ourselves and allow ourselves to be sustained by the dazzling truth of the profound connection that exists between human beings, which we had forgotten but which we have always intimately known.