05/04/2020 | Writer: Aslı Alpar
Belgin talks about how quarantine treats the queers: “I travel the world with my postcard collection while I'm staying at home.”
How is quarantine going on for LGBTI+'s as we try to comply with the quarantine due to the coronavirus, which the World Health Organization describes as a pandemic?
We asked LGBTI+'s, about how is quarantine treating them, what are they doing at home, what are they being deprived of? How is the quarantine going on for the queers?
Today’s narrator Belgin says, “I’m traveling around the world from my home, with my postcards.”
“Even though I'm in a risky group, I'm aware of my privileges”
I was already working from home before the outbreak, so it was easy for me to adapt in that sense. I'm making translations and content to an automotive website. I'm not staying idle, so it's just going on. I live with my mother, who is over 60 and with diabetes. That's my biggest concern, and I had a hard time keeping her at home and explaining the severity of the situation. She's being bored at home. She already had a tiny life, and it got even smaller. She's more restless than I am. She can't sleep at night.
I have high blood pressure. I'm worried about myself, but I never thought my mother would be so impatient. She's very worried and not taking the necessary precautions. Acting on her emotions, instincts. The generational difference has surfaced a lot in this period in general.
Other than that, I'm wrapping myself in low-tempo music to calm myself down, like smooth jazz, or bossa nova. Very fast music can induce anxiety, I only listen to them while trying to exercise.
I try to stretch with stupid dance moves, even for half an hour a day. I go out to the store once a week for shopping. I make bread at home, and it's good to play with dough. I travel the world with my postcard collection while I'm staying at home.
And, of course, friends. I have a few close friends who have always been in touch with me during the day via Skype and Facebook or Messenger. They make my day bearable.
Other than that, the rest is the series, movies, computer games and the struggle to keep my mom out of the open market. Oh, and I'd like to add this. Although I'm in a risky group because of my chronic illness, I'm aware of my privileges, I can work from home, my mother has a fixed income, we're in a secure apartment, and we have a grocery store downstairs. I'm really worried and sad about the people who don't have all that, who has to go to work every day, has to go out. More economic and medical measures should have taken for people in those conditions.
*The word Queerantine is a word made from the queer and quarantine words, produced by illustrator Adrienne Muse.
Translation: Yiğit E. Korkmaz
Tags: life
