March 2, 2021

I hate mornings. Many people do, which is why I think it’s ok to just come right out and say it. Mornings, at least lately, have been wrapt up with poor sleep, headaches, and nightmares. And the dread of facing another long weird busy but empty day.

That’s what I’m inspired by today, some bad nights where I wake from bad dreams into headaches that are likely because I’m sleeping with stress. Covid Stress. Covid, at least for me, is not normal. I work at a station that allows me to do my job from home. I do it, and it gets done. But it’s lonely and Zoom makes it feel worse.

It’s not normal for anyone. There are people who work every day, all day, in stores and with customers. There are two weird worlds going on, due to Covid, probably more. Slices of experience, none of them ideal. None of it normal and I expect most of it filled with stress and tensions I wouldn’t expect. Wearing a mask 8 hours a day, irritated and anxious customers, no outlet like gyms or bars or clubs to let off steam, then back to it at home with whatever tasks must be done there. Why on earth, those folks can’t get the vaccine in the early groups is beyond me. They should be paid far more and protected, because they are keeping so much going, certainly more than I am.

Harder than my situation, I suspect, and in different ways.

I am in a house filled with people, none of whom are very happy, and all of whom have strong personalities (and that includes the pets). I manage much of the caretaking associated with them-from feeding to medical to helping with school. It’s like two jobs really and of course I’ve been trying to participate in all the volunteer activities I normally partake in because…caring seems important right now.

For a while to maintain a sense of normalcy or purpose, I tried to schedule big weekly projects like cleaning out the cupboards or organizing the attic.

Then I tried creating extravagant dinners at night.

Then I used a modified monastic schedule so that each day would work in rhythm.

Through all of it I, we (my household) have been faithful. Masks, distance, monitoring of health, sanitizing everything, for the greater good and for our own health. We believe in the cause.

But… over the last few weeks, I’ve wanted to give up the rallying. My life feels like chaos. I’ve been sorely tempted to…go out. (I do.) To the mall. Sitting outside a cafe. On walks with friends. Masked of fucking course and distanced and in short duration and sanitized before and after, but I still feel like a rebellious teenager escaping the confines of an overly strict home.

After a week or so of giving into temptation, I felt happy again, almost normal. I FEEL things again. I feel myself! I’m there!

Our case counts were, for a while, very low. Like 2 per day low. Now they are back up, it’s about 39 cases per day average. Still, much lower than other places, but numbers can fool you into complacency clearly, so, I retreat again, like a good girl. Because as much as I want some relief, I don’t want Covid, I don’t want to give Covid. Because I am a good girl it turns out, not a rebel, and I care too much to break the rules as a way of life. This shames me somehow.

I’ve been caring since late January, repeating the clarion call for safety when the pandemic was just an outbreak in Wuhan. Caring is my middle name most of the time. I’m exhausted from caring. Isn’t that a funny thing? I’m tired because I see, more and more, people and groups and editorials and trends where not-caring is actually rewarded. Callousness in reporting. Karen-ing all over, instead of Care-in-ing. Disbelief in science and so forth.

It’s exhausting to watch and see grow, this trend. But yet, the normalcy of not caring…that’s a temptation as well. To just say, why not do what makes ME feel good.

Here’s the thing about normal. Normal is what you let it be, which is why things like abuse can be normalized over time to the point when it’s the expectation and the lack of it is suspicious. We are almost to that point with our sense of political discourse here in the US. We have an abusive discourse which has been built up over decades but especially cemented into normalcy over the last few years. The cruelty is the point. The lack of civility on top of terrible policy has been made to seem normal. Can we move into a new, more caring, direction? I don’t know.

If you think about the Pandemic, we’ve been in a year where we are asked (rightly!) to mask, distance, and sacrifice to stop the spread. The lack of faces, hugs, kisses, casual meet ups, gathering in groups etc is, for our culture, abnormal. It feels abnormal and off and wrong. A great many of us have rallied and sacrificed, and are doing our best to muddle through especially with hopes of a vaccine and have expectations things will be “back to normal” soon. But will they? The longer the pandemic rages, the more strains and weirdness it throws at us, means the more years of..this. What will culture look like in five years?

I was with a friend recently, a masked walk, and we finished walking but kept talking. We were 8 feet apart (I was by my car and I think my mask was off? Or hers was? Something like that) and my body kept wandering towards her, she’d step back. She was right of course. But it was this cutting reminder that we can’t be near each other. We can’t close the distance safely right now. What will that look like in 2026? Americans are so distant physically (compared to say, Italians and many other European cultures) as it is, will we be more so? Or will the temptation to give into the not-caring just wear away at us to the point that we’ll just give in? And the virus, already seemingly unstoppable, will just…roll over us all?

I don’t have any answers. I’m chaos right now, but still clearly on the caring side of chaos because I suppose I’m constitutionally programmed like that, even though I despise myself for it. My heart longs for the before-times in ways I’ve never felt nostalgia. I obsess over choicesI made in my youth and early adulthood as if perhaps those were to blame for where we all find ourselves now, butterfly wings and hurricanes you know.

I guess I come back to the answers I start with, which is that we make up society and culture and it is what we do. We make it and then it helps make us back, so I have to keep caring and I can’t go to the mall anymore? At least through June? But boy, it hurts and each day gets harder and harder to the point where I understand why people give in. I won’t, I hope, but I understand it.