This perspective was contributed by Peter Abraham Fukuda Loewi on April 26. Share yours with us, too!
My name is Peter Abraham Fukuda Loewi. I am 31 years old. Actually, my 31st birthday is tomorrow, and I will be spending it alone inside, and that’s how it should be.
I have spent much of my time inside, as my picture suggests, arguing with my cat who loves to sit in my seat just as I’m trying to work on something important. But it’s been a very interesting time for me.
I moved back to Denver in December to house-sit for my parents, who had taken temp jobs on the other side of the country. I was just going to be here until I transitioned back into the U.S. I had consulted extensively for the United Nations, including on disaster management, so this time is really a doozy for us.
But I was kind of struggling to make the transition from international work into local, national work in policy and politics, and then this happened. So, all of a sudden, I went from just being a short-term house sitter to locked inside and in a much better situation than my parents, who are in a two-bedroom apartment in Philadelphia. I have a four-bedroom house that my family’s lived in since the ’60s all to myself — and, well, the cat, Julius.
I was once homeless, and now I have a house and now I’m safe and now I have a garden. And I’m SAFE. And that’s something that I never really expected to be.
So much of the work that I have been doing has been about making sure that other people have the same opportunities to be safe, and we have a whole lot more work to do on that. And that’s frustrating. So I spend much of my time now very, very anxious. Fearing for the safety of my friends on the front line and my family who are not always so healthy.
But I also spend it angry. I spend a lot of it angry, watching bumbling idiots around the world f*** things up for everybody. And I go back and forth between being absolutely hopeless and just wanting to pack my bag and start walking.
Part of me wants to fight — to turn around and run towards the problem, as I’ve always done — and try and fight and support those who are fighting.
It’s very weird to be safe.
Some days, I’m physically alone, and other days, I’m emotionally social.
My soul is alone.
It will be about how to balance that and making sure that other people have the same opportunities to balance that.
I hope more people come out of social isolation realizing that they need to help others, too.
This is part of the Denverite Social Isolation Archive Project. We want to hear from you, too! Here’s how to contribute.
