Ennui

The lede on today's article that came out on the SunStar website says it all: “Cebu City remains under enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) until July 15, 2020 and is the only local government unit classified under strict restrictions in the country.”

Well, no surprise there, considering the city logged 353 coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) cases on Tuesday, June 30, alone.

I guess, I'm trying to look for a word to describe how I currently feel. “Lugubrious” is so two months ago. I have to come up with another one. Hmm, let me see.

I don't feel angry. Although I've been thinking of setting fire to people who annoy me. And I'm not talking about just one person. I'm talking about the entire family, something akin to a genocidal massacre. Well, I did wake up with no internet connection and I could not contact the service provider, which forced me to go to the office to type this column even though it's my day-off.

Peckish? Maybe. Just a tad, but I need to go on a diet or risk regaining all that weight I lost after two years of hard work and lots of sacrifice.

I'm tempted to say angst-ridden, but gosh, I haven't been twenty-something for so long. Like 15 years.

Anyway, it's a no-brainer that Cebu City is still under lock and key, so to speak.

Yes, the streets are quiet during curfew hours. When I walked home from work last night, only dogs roamed the streets. However, the sidewalk across the University of San Carlos along P. del Rosario St. was full of the huddled bodies of the sleeping homeless. Some had makeshift face protection, but the rest of them didn't have any mask on.

It's the same scene behind the Cebu Normal University on Pelaez St. or the side of the Police Regional Office 7 headquarters on R.R. Landon St.

Families eking a survival: half-naked little children accosting passers-by for a few centavos, voluptuous teens with a twinkle in their eye begging for food and grownups having an argument for the whole world to hear.

This government is telling residents to stay at home and yet it ignores the problem of homelessness while a highly infectious virus runs rampant in the city. Okay, maybe “ignore” is too harsh a word. After all, the Labella administration and the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Infectious Diseases have other pressing matters to attend to like apprehending ECQ violators. And doing what with them exactly?

Detaining them in buses at the Plaza Independencia and forcing them to exercise with strangers and thereby exposing them to possible infection?

I'm trying to put a finger on what I'm feeling and I think I know what it is.

It's called ennui.