The coronavirus is giving many people a taste of how I’ve been living for YEARS now… the isolation, the lack of touch, the lack of structure, the aimlessness and lack of purpose. Little has changed for me, and yet this existence suddenly feels more unbearable than ever. I know I can still see my friends one-on-one but it all feels pointless because I’m lonely even when I have company. Something separates me from people. My therapist calls it a “space suit”. When we have experienced trauma, we pull back from the world, and only relate to it via the space suit. But it starts to get very lonely in here and actually it’s like being starved to death if we keep the space suit on for too long. We can’t feel the things that make interacting worthwhile/meaningful, we can’t experience intimacy, and we walk away frustrated that people don’t meet our real self. Instead all they know is the space suit, and some even fall in love with the space suit believing they have found true connection.