I started writing these narratives back on March 14th, intending to give myself a way to trace how the pandemic changed the world around us throughout its duration. I wrote up a list of ten thoughts on that first post. It seems appropriate on this one, the last post of the year, that I should do the same.
1. Since I’ve included statistics in each pandemic narrative, I feel I should keep that going. Worldwide: 81.5 million cases; 1.78 million deaths. America: 19.4 million cases; 347,000 deaths. This means approximately one out of every one thousand Americans has died from this. If that count been the result of a war, I’m pretty sure that both politically and socially we would be much more united around the idea of working against it than we currently are. However, I’m now able to add a new statistic to the tally: So far, there have been 2.1 million vaccines given. A start.
2. I don’t like this about myself, but I’ll own it: I rarely start a new year with optimism. I think it’s fair to attribute this to losing my sister: When the new year rolls around I always carry at least a small suspicion that there’s going to be a day when I’ll be expecting everything to be normal, and life will put up a serve that resets it in a darker light, and everything will be about trying to survive and process the experiences that follow. Vaccine production aside, there’s still a pandemic going on, and there are still reasons for all of us to begin 2021 with active caution. On the plus side though, at least the most incompetent, self-centered, ignorant, and corrupt president in all of American history, whose foolishness is largely responsible for the predicament we’re in, will be out of office in a few weeks.
3. I honestly feel like I’m one of the few people left on Earth who still bothers to live with any precautions. Cars pass my house all day long like they always have. On the rare days I go to Target for a curbside pickup, all of the parking lots are full. I have filled my car's gas tank twice since March. Granted, I have no metric for what the outside world is like, other than the way the selfish, headstrong few will broadly paint social media with proclamations of their bold stands against anything they’ve been asked to do in the name of public health. Feeling like I’m one of the 0.0004% of the population still striving to adhere to anything but the bare minimum of staying safe is disheartening. It only compounds the isolation. Even if it’s mostly imagined, it feels just as real when you don’t have any evidence in front of you to prove it’s wrong.
4. What will it be like when the world begins to once again take the shape of something recognized as normal, whenever that might happen? How long until the world is safe again? How difficult will that transition be, to rejoin the world? Being an introvert has helped tremendously as far as the isolation goes, but introverts are not, by nature, antisocial. I don’t mind wearing masks, but my God, I can think of maybe five times in the past nine months I’ve even touched another person.
5. There’s no way this isn’t taking a mental toll on me beyond what I immediately recognize. Many people who’ve known me have heard me say how I feel like I drop off the face of the Earth for someone else unless I’m directly in their line of sight. That’s never been more real now, feeling tucked away like stored human surplus that society has found a way to manage without.
6. I also feel a sense of wasted time, which is probably a reflexive response since I’m always so ready to be self-critical. I haven’t baked any bread or learned any new languages online. I haven’t read a fraction of the books I could have, or caught up on classic movies or developed a yoga routine or painted any rooms or learned the ukulele. But then I remember the time I put into revising a new book, and how difficult that was, and I’m quite proud of the accomplishment. I feel this one could be my best shot at publication, at least as far as middle grade goes. I still think it’s a weird story, but it’s thought-provoking, it’s original, it’s fairly well-written (if I’m allowed to think that about my own story), and I’m anxious for more people in the world to know about it, even if in the immediate that only amounts to a handful.
7. If I were to go back to school and earn another degree, just to pursue an interest, I think I’d study sociology. Because of that, I’ve often wondered exactly what the tipping point was for America, when we went from agreeing to shelter in place and behave in ways meant to preserve the greater good, then shifted over to so much more of a “Well, I’m not sick/This is a free country, don’t take away my rights” ethos. The idea of “we’re all in this together” that was so prevalent back in the spring has worn away to nothing but a faded platitude. I fear that perspective, as well as the reactions to it, will make it much harder for our society to recover and reunite. I’m afraid things will continue to get worse before we see any significant social healing.
8. How much longer is this going to go on? The vaccine is here. When will I be able to get it? When will the rest of my family be eligible? Which one will it be? What will be the circumstances of its availability? Everything about this is still new; there’s no way to see past the next turn in the road when no one has ever traveled the road before.
9. Do I really want life to go back to what it was before once the world comes back together? Honestly, not in every way. I’m not sure if this is a reaction to the beginning of a new year, but I feel like the pandemic is still going to be around long enough to use this as a transformational time. How could I take steps, even tentative ones, that would develop over time to replace the things in my life I’m dissatisfied about? How much of that thinking is my own motivation, or coming from subtle pressures of what society has to say about what I should be, or what other people in my life expect of me? God knows how many years I have left. Ten? Twenty? Twenty-five? Six? There’s no telling. What do I want that time to be like? What would make it the best, the happiest, version of a life I could build around myself? Has there ever been a more appropriate time for that kind of self-examination? I keep falling back to the idea of where my priorities should be, and why (or if) the things I've held as important are necessarily things that should even be considered priorities.
10. Like I said, I rarely start the year with optimism. However, there’s always that flicker of hope that refuses to die. We all have dreams and aspirations. We all have anxieties we’d like to banish from our lives. Could 2021 be the year when things drift to the positive, and things will go our way? Will we be gifted with small pieces of individual balance to reward us for what we’ve endured?
I suppose we’ll start to discover that in a few more days.
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