These types of posts I’m hoping to use as a kind of therapy. A safe space to just unload my thoughts, fears, feelings, and strategies. I had a therapist a few years back, to help manage my anxiety issues, but the cost of visits, time spent, medication adjustments, and ultimately his retirement left me not seeking another therapist.
The first topic (and probably a recurring topic) is COVID-19. I’m sure it’s high on everyone’s mental list of worries. Here is America (and I’m sure throughout the whole world), we have quite the range of individuals. Some completely believe it’s made up, some think it’s not serious, some have isolated themselves from everyone and everything in an attempt to stay safe, some vaccinate, some don’t. Others do everything “right” by masking, vaccinating, social distancing themselves, yet still catch it. Others run around with no masks, no vaccines, come in close contact with positive cases, and don’t seem to catch it. This virus truly has no boundaries, no limits, and presence itself differently in every individual.
Frankly, I’m tired of all of it. I don’t care what people believe, or what freedoms or liberties may be getting trampled, or that the government is most certainly out to get us, or that so and so had it and it wasn’t that bad, or you know someone who died, or was on a ventilator for weeks, or has long COVID, etc… I know it sounds heartless to say it out loud, but it’s so hard to find empathy when it’s basically the same shit day in and day out. There’s not a dinner table out there that hasn’t had pandemic talk. We are sliding into our third year of dealing with this, and it’s exhausting. And yeah, I had to do the math.
March 2020 – America started shutting down. My oldest daughter’s birthday is March 6th, and we had traveled up the Wizarding World Comicon in Cleveland. I now know that it was in the news in the few months before, but at this point in time, I hadn’t heard of it. Just a few weeks later our Girl Scout cookie booths were cancelled, it was everywhere in the news and social media, the public was panicking, and we had no idea what was going to happen next.
June 2021 – Over one year in and masking and capacity restrictions lifted in most of Ohio. Vaccines were rolling out, people wanted back to “normal”.
December 2021 – Cases are at the highest since recording started. In my county, there have been 17,618 cases reported as of 12/28/21, with 325 deaths. Our 2019 population was 115,710. That means over 15% of my county’s population has been infected. We are worried about Delta and Omicron variants, some local companies are terminating employees that aren’t vaccinated, other companies are taking surveys on which employees are vaccinated, in the event the government mandates go forward and vaccination becomes a requirement for employment in most companies.
We are just getting ready to start another Girl Scout cookie season, and I’m hesitant to order big this time. In 2020, most of our booths were over with before the shutdown occurred, so we ended with 165 boxes that weren’t sold, and our council took a big hit by letting troops donate unsold cookies to food pantries. Last year, we participated in booths, but some of the better spots did not let us set up. Mask mandates were in place, and 95% of people we dealt with followed the mandates and were masked. Everyone was just so happy so see a bit of normalcy that although we didn’t sell quite the number we normally do, it was only because we were reserved with numbers and didn’t expose ourselves nearly as much as if it were a regular selling season. Now, mandates are cancelled, new variants are around, politics and people are surrounded by tension, and the future few months seem so clouded.
March 2022 – We will be entering Year 3 of the pandemic. It’s no longer a matter of if, but when will we catch it, and how bad will we have it? It’s hard to quarantine in a house with 6 people, 1 bathroom, and shared bedrooms. We go places on occasion. We still have Girl Scout meetings. The girls still have karate lessons (although it is only private lessons, not group). I am by far the most exposed since I work retail, so I am out of the house and exposed to people at least 3 days a week. There are people we know who are more careful than we are, that currently have it, so I feel like we are on borrowed time.
Essentially, it’s a waiting game, and it really plays on my anxiety… How will this event shape the future of my kids? How will it continuously impact mine? Will things ever be back to “normal”, or will time now be split into the “before time”, and the “after time” or “new normal”? Are we all going to carry around a form of PTSD from this? Will the stigma surrounding mental heath change? Will our healthcare change? Will work from home options become more easily attainable and permanent? Will online ordering and curbside pickup surpass spending hours shopping in a store for groceries? Will spending more time at home foster more creativity in kids, or will they become more socially isolated?
The world has a lot of evolving to do over the next number of years.
In conclusion, I still care, and I still worry, but man, this is getting tiring…