We’re Supposed to Go Back to Normal Life Now?
Two months ago, every article I read about Covid-19 talked about how virulent the Omicron strain is – so much so that the masks we were using would not work to prevent its spread, according to the experts. They recommended purchasing N95 masks and replacing them regularly.
Even as the pandemic seemed less scary, I found myself feeling more anxious. The N95 masks were exceptionally uncomfortable and made me feel lightheaded, due to their thickness and lack of air circulation.
But I had Covid once and I’d really, really prefer not to get it again. I suppose it is inevitable, just as my first experience with it was inevitable, but I absolutely never want to go through that again.
So I suffered through my outings with the N95.
And then, two months later, the mask mandate ended.
I hadn’t much thought about that. But once it came, I found myself experiencing intense anxiety.
We went from N95s to nothing in the space of a couple months and after two years of pandemic trauma, I feel frozen in fear.
Two years ago, just before my nephew Alex’s first birthday, we went into lockdown.
It was terrifying. I live alone and all I wanted at that time was to be with my family. But we were encouraged to remain in our own households, and so we did.
As scared as I was, I somehow believed the whole thing would blow over in a month or so. I’m not sure why I thought that (inexperience with a pandemic, I suppose?), but I truly thought if I could just wait it out, things would be okay.
But time kept marching on, with no answers or end to the isolation in sight. I began to realize that nothing was going to change for a very long time.
All I wanted was to be with friends and family. But I couldn’t. Both my parents fell into the “vulnerable” category, and my mother was so scared of getting sick that she went into full isolation. And little Alex also fell into the vulnerable group, which meant my sister would not let me come anywhere near her house.
Eventually, I had to go to the store, and I remember how terrifying that felt. I kept expecting to encounter someone transitioning into a zombie, like in World War Z. The store shelves were mostly empty for nearly a year, thanks to the panic buying. And sometimes, unmasked male customers came into the store with handguns strapped to their belts, who would edge up next to other customers who were wearing masks, presumably to antagonize them.
Everywhere I went, I was alone and terrified.
At some point late that spring, I was finally allowed to see a few family members.
I saw my brother and his family. Then my mother and other brother (who lives with her as a caretaker) allowed me to come if I would promise not to leave my house for two weeks beforehand. Well, no problem there: where else would I go?
These were joyful visits, but also still filled with fear. I was terrified at the thought of infecting my mother. She had decided that Covid would kill her – and I believe that if she believes that, it will. And I don’t want to be responsible for that.
My sister believes Covid will be fatal to little Alex. Again, I couldn’t bear to be responsible for making him sick.
Over the course of the summer, as things opened up a bit, I learned everyone’s preferences for social contact. Some friends and family members didn’t require anything from me. Others had different requirements for different lengths of quarantine time before any visits. Sometimes, even after quarantining for 14 days, I’d still have to wear a mask in the presence of certain family members.
This became exhausting. I had to plan my social outings literally months in advance so I could fit in all the quarantine time I’d need for each one. I worked out a sequence of visits, according to those quarantines so I could be as strategic as possible and fit in as many visits as I could in a safe manner.
However, it came with a price. Some friends and family began expressing disappointment and frustration because I couldn’t do most of the things we used to do anymore, including spending holidays together. My quarantines often got in the way of their desire to see me at certain times.
And it was often frustrating for me because those who required the strictest quarantining from me had spouses who worked in retail or other public venues. So there I was, isolating myself for fourteen days in order to go into a household where one of the inhabitants was exposed to hundreds of people a day, five days a week. I was the one being exposed in those situations. I was not the risk factor.
Yet, if I wanted to visit these family members, that was the rule. So I swallowed my frustration and did it.
I was thrilled when the vaccinations came around. Actually, that’s not entirely true. I was both thrilled and terrified. I’ve been terrified through every step of this journey, make no mistake about that.
I had a bit of worry. Was this vaccination going to be safe, with such a fast development?
I didn’t think much on it, though. Ultimately, I realized that making a decision to protect my health and the health of everyone around me was worth any potential risks. I figured, if on the off chance I was going to die, I’d rather die from a vaccination that I took with the hopes of being able to move more freely in the world, than to die from Covid while attached to a ventilator.
What I didn’t realize was that not everyone in my family would make this decision. One group, it turned out, was 100% opposed to the vaccine.
In the early days, there were a few comments from both sides, each one trying to subtly convince the other to reconsider their stance.
No one did.
And because of the vulnerable people in the family, we suddenly had to face the fact that we wouldn’t be getting together again, as a whole, for a long time.
Maybe never again.
The vaccine wasn’t the fantasy cure-all I had hoped it would be. It didn’t end the pandemic as I had daydreamed it would. It didn’t drastically change pandemic protocols.
We all just kept going, and nothing much seemed to change since the pandemic had begun.
Despite the emotional hardship of living the way I had been living – mostly in isolation and planning out time with one friend or a couple family members at a time, weeks or months in advance – I continued on my path. It seemed the only way I could see all the people I wanted to see, and that was very important to me.
I think it’s fair to say that I was probably one of the least likely people to get Covid. I live alone. I work from home. And I whittled my social encounters down to thirteen family members (8 of them nieces and nephews) and two friends, and only after quarantining between visits. The highest exposure I had, for the most part, was going to the grocery store.
And then…I got Covid. I was the third person in my family to get it. I got it from my inner circle: from my two nephews who had brought it home from school.
To be honest, I was devastated. I had spent the previous 19 months making extreme sacrifices to keep my family safe, often by their request, when that protocol sometimes didn’t make any logical sense (like when the kids went back to school).
And there, in the inner circle I had so carefully protected all that time, I got sick from them.
There has been no end to the Covid anxiety in my family. The rifts between vaccinated and unvaccinated have grown to the point of physical estrangement. The only relationship certain family members have at this point is via text. I am the only one who regularly visits everyone, anymore.
There are still members of my family who are convinced Covid will kill them or one of the vulnerable people among us. Covid isolation protocols for the family are still strict, even when there’s no logical sense to that, considering how exposed the people who are most uptight about it are. And at least one member of my family has vowed to never leave the house again, now that the mask mandate is over.
I am currently preparing for a family visit that comes with dozens of rules around Covid protocol – even though, again, none of it makes logical sense, considering that half the people involved are 2,000 times more exposed to the outside world than I am. (Yes, I actually did the math.)
In the days before this event, I’m trying to continue to conduct myself very carefully, like when I went to the store yesterday and wore a mask. I was surprised to find that no one else was wearing one. Not even one other person.
Were people staring at me? Did they think I was crazy? Overreacting? I kept waiting for someone to yell at me, “You don’t have to wear that, lady!” I’ve been walking around for two years fearing that confrontation.
But no one said anything.
As I walked back to my car, I felt overwhelmed with emotions. Should I feel ashamed that I’m still wearing a mask? But…how did we go from N95s to nothing in the space of two months? Am I the only one who has whiplash from this?
I’m confused, standing in a space that feels somewhere in the muddy middle of the outside world, in which the pandemic doesn’t exist anymore, and my family, who are more worried about Covid’s potential for destruction than ever.
And I’m scared to take my mask off. I’m scared I’ll make someone in my family sick. I’m scared that if I don’t keep living in a cycle of quarantines, several of my family members will opt out of seeing me, indefinitely. I’m scared that the unvaccinated and vaccinated members of my family will never heal the rift between them.
I’m not sure I’m ready for this. I still have an N95 hanging on a hook by the back door.
It’s been two years of extreme isolation and dealing with the stress of every little choice – even going to the post office – having to be considered a risk. How am I supposed to just erase those two years of fear, strategy, and risk assessment and go back to life the way it used to be? I don’t even think my brain can do that without a few years of retraining.
Maybe taking my mask off isn’t even what this is about. Maybe the problem is everything underneath it…
