Warning: Some COVID-related whining contained below…you’ve been warned
I try really hard not to put anymore energy into bitching and whining about COVID. I can’t control it, I can’t fix it, I can’t make it go away. But I’m having a lot of feelings today, being that it’s the day the government arbitrarily just decided COVID was “over”.
When COVID first hit, what kept me going was hope and actually picturing the day when I’d walk back into my beautiful office, maskless, and hug all my coworkers because COVID was gone. I pictured the day after I got all my vaccines when I would be able to do things I used to enjoy like going to concerts and movies (all while not wearing a mask). For many people that ended up being their experience, but it unfortunately wasn’t mine. I’ve never been able to have those moments because the virus kept mutating, because the vaccines didn’t offer full protection, and because I soon realized I was never going to be able to know how COVID could affect me. And I realized it was never going to go away.
I think the let down of all that has been the worst part of the last 3 years. Things in life don’t often go the way we hope, but it was like a punch in the gut to realize that day when I flung open the door and went out into the world maskless and not having to ever worry about getting COVID just wasn’t going to happen.
So I’m sad about all of that. And then there’s the anger…the other thing I try not to put too much energy into because I spent a good 2 years being pissed off all the time, but I am in my feels today. I had a situation this week where my tooth/mouth were bothering me. Most people would just call their dentist and go in right? Not me. I had to do a risk analysis of what would be worse now that the mask mandate in medical settings is gone too. Do I wait it out more with my tooth to see if it really is a serious problem? Or do I go in and risk getting COVID? I was so frustrated, it brought me to tears. I’ve never been a big fan of going to the doctor, but I at least used to be able to do it without having to do a risk analysis on what was worse or what could kill me or harm me more?
Lockdown is over but the isolation I feel is still very much present. Living with a rare and mostly invisible disease can make me feel very isolated to begin with, and now I’m the weird, sole mask-wearer most places I go. Even most of the disabled people I follow on Instagram don’t wear one anymore. They held the Muscular Dystrophy Association conference indoors and not a mask was in sight. It makes me start to question myself and feel like even more of an outlier than I already do. I don’t even fit it in my own community.
So in closing, for some of us, COVID is never really going to be over. I at least held out hope that maybe we’d continue to be able to study it more and we’d get more information but now that it’s been declared “over”, organizations aren’t getting the funding or aren’t as easily able to study it anymore. So this may be the status quo for a while or forever. I’m just gonna have to keep feeling my feelings and find ways to navigate through all of it (as usual, the onus is on those of who are the most affected to have to figure shit out) and find some semblance of joy.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go watch a beautiful sunset because that always makes me feel better.
[image credit: Photo by Karolina Grabowska: https://www.pexels.com/photo/set-of-medical-protective-face-masks-4197564/%5D
Disability & Determination 