I know we're all like, fatigued of hearing about news fatigue, but I'm honestly surprised it took me this long. THIS long to finally acknowledge that a big goddamn drain on my energy is the pandemic and the way it, as it has done for everyone else globally, has leached its greedy little fingers down to every last bit of my life. I don't think I realized how much I, as an introvert, needed all that social interaction I was getting. All that stopping by my friend's house for dinner and hanging out, all that camping, all those trips with friends, the occasional parties where I could sit next to people on the couch and drink 5 hard ciders, the dances I didn't go to because I was burnt out by them then. I don't regret that, but you know... what I would give to go dancing now.
Lately it's really been too much to think about. Redbeard and I want to get married in about a year and a half and it feels impossible to plan. How many people can we even have there? If we want to do it in the summer, will things be easier? Do I have to capitulate to an outdoor wedding? What if it rains on the day of? Do I just send 100 people home? Do my extended relatives understand that this means I can't invite them anymore? That it's more important to me to have there the people who are close to me now? How do we book a venue? How do we plan to do a n y t h i n g this way? Will people be vaccinated then? How many guests do we think will be in that category? Fuck, I can't even figure out if we can have an engagement party this summer. Where would we do it? Who would we invite? No one can travel very far and we have so few friends here, and of those who can travel, so many are not in a position to be staying in a hotel just for one party.
I used to talk a lot about how I didn't really picture my own wedding. I still don't. But the one thing I had started to picture was the reception. A big room with string lights, a room with music that increases in volume as the night goes on, a dance floor full of people I love absolutely getting the fuck down and not giving a shit about what they look like, getting lightly trashed with friends, my hair coming loose and sticking to sweat on the back of my neck, Redbeard smiling and laughing at me, wondering how many good candids our photographer will get. A bachelorette party, I had pictured... a weekend of playing dumb drinking games with friends, making big group meals, playing loud music and being stupid all together, introducing some friends to other friends. What do I get now? What do any of us get? A quiet meal together? Socially distanced partner dancing? Individually wrapped cupcakes? Do we ever get to do it normally or is this virus just here now? Like, forever?
And it's hard to just be like okay, I'll compartmentalize this and think about other things but I can't. Every last thing is tainted. I can't focus on lab work because I worry all the time the lab will be shut down again. I can't watch TV and unwind because nobody socially distances on TV and that's enough to break my immersion these days. I can't play sims because I get jealous of them and how they can just have friends over on a whim. The one time I managed to get away was going camping, but even THAT had the spectre of my return to a mom-imposed quarantine looming over it. Sometimes reading is enough, I guess, until I remember that I can't go to the damn library anymore. I can't go fucking anywhere these days, and even when I do, it doesn't feel the same. Is it ever going to be the same again? Did it take this long for the grief to hit me because I can't keep living in survival mode anymore?
All of it makes me think of the people on social media who rail against masks, against closures, against restrictions and limits. Maybe they're scared too. Maybe they're looking for any last little thing to hold onto that means this won't be forever, things aren't forever changed and altered, that this isn't just the way things are from now on- indefinitely and forever. Some little way we were wrong, that we overlooked something, that what we're doing isn't actually necessary, and I wonder if their ignorance is just some kind of protective mechanism so they don't have to stare their anxiety in the face and feel it, full force. I can't even say I'm doing that with the amount of avoidance I'm doing, but it's not like I get to take two weeks off to just like, grieve. We're all grieving.
In the beginning I think I thought this wouldn't happen in the way people think no one they know will ever get cancer. Except then I met someone who has cancer. I mean, I guess a tumor isn't quite the same, but I digress. And then I fell in love with him and got engaged and I cannot tell you how much I have changed, living with that. Eventually it's just background noise, and you just accept there is nothing you can do and enjoy what you can while you can. The anxiety is shelved somewhere in the recesses of my brain- only pulled out when something happens that might give me cause to worry again. A seizure, a bad headache, a new MRI. The rest of the time I can't function with that worry open in my mind.
I guess that's enough to give me some hope. Someday I might be able to shelve this too, to accept that this is how things are, and all I can do is work with it. But right now I'm angry, so fuck it.
-swegan
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