Never going back again
August 19, 2021 7:57 AM Subscribe
[Covid related] I, too, was extremely excited to see friends without the necessary, tortured conversations about exposures, testing, and local positivity rates. I, too, yearned to have a long, carefree meal at a restaurant and sit at a favorite bar. I was thrilled this summer to do those things and I did them happily and masklessly. But I also suspected all my excitement and planning and celebration was also papering over — or, at the very least forestalling — my ability to process the trauma of the last year and a half. SL Galaxy Brain Substack by Charlie Warzel.
Never had a favorite bar. Guess I was a loser even before the time of covid. Recently had to run a whole bunch of errands, remembering I filled the tank once during covid.
posted by sammyo at 8:58 AM on August 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by sammyo at 8:58 AM on August 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
I have, for the first time perhaps, developed an acute sense of home and place and family.Interesting. I have no doubt that is true, but I've had the exact opposite experience. I'm frustrated by my home. I'm irritable with family. I'm bored by possessions. I distrust my neighbors. Throwing everything away and living in a different, distant hotel every week for the rest of my life sounds really tempting. (Sadly, I'm not excited by most of the jobs that actually allow one to do that in a comfortable way.) I've been incredibly lucky throughout the pandemic. But, it's made it surprisingly clear how much I don't actually care about home at all, either specifically or as a concept.
posted by eotvos at 9:38 AM on August 19, 2021 [15 favorites]
I went to an annual dance event yesterday; last year it was online. Lower than usual attendance. It was really emotional to be with this group of people doing something we love. Recreational dancing with live music, good recorded music, good leaders, inspires something as close to bliss as I get. I felt really emotional walking in and greeting people, and felt as much joy as I've felt since Feb., 2020, when I started isolating. Today I feel so much scorn for anti-vaxxers; their actions are costing lives, funds, joy.
posted by theora55 at 9:44 AM on August 19, 2021 [11 favorites]
posted by theora55 at 9:44 AM on August 19, 2021 [11 favorites]
Social and professional status — the forces that shaped many of my life decisions and daily rhythms — now feel almost trivial at times. In April, I quit my job — the type of job I’d coveted my whole career.
This feels related to a link posted yesterday, Why are so many knowledge workers quitting their jobs?
I quit my job a month ago, for absolutely pandemic related reasons. I'm going to have to go back to work eventually, and I know what I don't want that to look like. I know it'll probably look like that anyway. As much as we talk about not wanting to return to the office, I think combining work and home has bad side-effects for some of us that we don't really know how to deal with yet.
--
I am furious at big swaths of this country for their narrow and reckless interpretation of freedom. Some of that distrust and anger and loss of faith won’t go away.
I mean, that, and the BLM protests. I lived a few blocks away from the CHOP, and saw what happened pretty directly. Six Seattle PD officers were at the Jan. 6th insurrection. For those six, how many PD officers shared the same view, but didn't have the time or inclination to go all the way to DC? If I get mugged, or my house is broken into, who do I turn to?
Anti-vaxxers seem like a facet of this weird turn towards fascism that half the country is lapping up. Seeing your neighbors with "All lives splatter" bumper stickers ALSO start going off about freedums just...
Add to that the growing homelessness crisis, the growing ecological catastrophe, and oh look! Delta, and there's a lot of trauma just waiting to be dealt with that isn't going to go away with a night of partying, or a restaurant visit.
posted by fnerg at 10:07 AM on August 19, 2021 [31 favorites]
This feels related to a link posted yesterday, Why are so many knowledge workers quitting their jobs?
I quit my job a month ago, for absolutely pandemic related reasons. I'm going to have to go back to work eventually, and I know what I don't want that to look like. I know it'll probably look like that anyway. As much as we talk about not wanting to return to the office, I think combining work and home has bad side-effects for some of us that we don't really know how to deal with yet.
--
I am furious at big swaths of this country for their narrow and reckless interpretation of freedom. Some of that distrust and anger and loss of faith won’t go away.
I mean, that, and the BLM protests. I lived a few blocks away from the CHOP, and saw what happened pretty directly. Six Seattle PD officers were at the Jan. 6th insurrection. For those six, how many PD officers shared the same view, but didn't have the time or inclination to go all the way to DC? If I get mugged, or my house is broken into, who do I turn to?
Anti-vaxxers seem like a facet of this weird turn towards fascism that half the country is lapping up. Seeing your neighbors with "All lives splatter" bumper stickers ALSO start going off about freedums just...
Add to that the growing homelessness crisis, the growing ecological catastrophe, and oh look! Delta, and there's a lot of trauma just waiting to be dealt with that isn't going to go away with a night of partying, or a restaurant visit.
posted by fnerg at 10:07 AM on August 19, 2021 [31 favorites]
I feel US and EU leadership has mostly failed us terribly during this crisis, and this in itself has glummed my outlook, quite apart from the fear of getting sick, the rigors of lockdown, and the grief over dead friends and acquaintances. After initial gestures of solidarity and genuine gumption, leadership in the West by and large settled for an expedient consensus that minimizes political accountability while setting impossible expectations for medical technology and poorly-paid, poorly-protected "essentials" to paper over the cracks.
I feel like the roof of our Public House has sprung a leak and the landlord has handed us a couple of rolls of duck tape. Concerns over the scampering with pots and pans and the weird fungal growths are dismissed as unavoidable, and nonsense like "the water will always get through anyway, so it's better to learn to live with it" are presented as clear-headed, rational argument. We're told that to repair the roof would be prohibitively expensive and unfair to boot, since "when you look at the numbers" the problem is mostly confined to the few unfortunate souls who occupy the attic anyway.
I feel I'm a pretty sanguine guy, but I'm aghast at the lackadaisical attitude with which we've accepted COVID-19 as yet another "unavoidable" source of uncertainty and chaos in an increasingly unstable and insecure world. There's only so many stressors any of us as individuals can deal with, and there's only so much vandalism the Public House can take. Trauma isn't a single event but an accumulation of shocks beyond your control.
posted by dmh at 11:01 AM on August 19, 2021 [61 favorites]
I feel like the roof of our Public House has sprung a leak and the landlord has handed us a couple of rolls of duck tape. Concerns over the scampering with pots and pans and the weird fungal growths are dismissed as unavoidable, and nonsense like "the water will always get through anyway, so it's better to learn to live with it" are presented as clear-headed, rational argument. We're told that to repair the roof would be prohibitively expensive and unfair to boot, since "when you look at the numbers" the problem is mostly confined to the few unfortunate souls who occupy the attic anyway.
I feel I'm a pretty sanguine guy, but I'm aghast at the lackadaisical attitude with which we've accepted COVID-19 as yet another "unavoidable" source of uncertainty and chaos in an increasingly unstable and insecure world. There's only so many stressors any of us as individuals can deal with, and there's only so much vandalism the Public House can take. Trauma isn't a single event but an accumulation of shocks beyond your control.
posted by dmh at 11:01 AM on August 19, 2021 [61 favorites]
Thank you for posting this; I thought it was well written. I think this author has done a great job of describing what it’s like to be profoundly changed by grief that causes you to have an existential crisis. COVID has been that for many people; for some people it’s their first time really confronting this kind of experience.
Realizing your pants don’t fit isn’t the most profound revelation, I know. But, oddly-fitting trousers were the apt physical metaphor I needed to realize the enormity of the last two years. Mentally, physically, I’d undergone a change. In every way, there is more of me today than there was in February 2020. More grief, more distrust, more anger, more anxiety, more hope, more empathy…more everything.
This article made me think about how I felt after my pregnancy losses. I’ve talked about them many times on MeFi, partly because I want to destigmatize pregnancy loss, partly because it’s how I continue to process what has happened to me, and partly because my losses are events that caused an indelible, immutable change in me. I am a completely different person because I’ve been pregnant twice and both times ended without a living child. I’m not a better or worse person, but I’m different. I’m more empathetic, I think, but I’m also more subdued, less optimistic, and more prone to depression.
Thanks to a lucky combination of a great support network and a general predisposition to baseline good mental health, I still enjoy my life and derive pleasure from it, but the point is, I can’t and haven’t gone back to “normal” (the way I was before my losses, when I still thought I would become a mother). Yet that’s what I think most people hoped I would be able to do—I think with the best intentions they genuinely hoped I could grieve my losses and then go back to the way I was. But that’s not how grief works.
Both physically and psychologically, I've undergone a profound change. My body will always remind me that I’ve been pregnant twice. Like the author found, clothes fit differently now, and I have some chronic health issues resulting from those pregnancies. Psychologically, there’s a part of me that will always grieve and is always ready to pop out and remind me of what I’ve lost. To live in this world is to be surrounded by children and parent-child relationships. It’s less triggering than it used to be, but it’s always a reminder and probably always will be. I can usually deal with the inevitable pangs of longing now without sinking into a deep days-long depression, but it’s always lurking. I don’t imagine that’s very different from most people who have suffered profound loss.
And now I think people are finding the pandemic has affected them the same way. There’s been a lot of loss in this pandemic: loss of life, loss of trust in institutions and fellow humans (sometimes family and friends), loss of a sense of safety, loss of livelihood. I think people should indeed expect they’ll be permanently changed by this experience, and I think foolishly hoping that things will just “go back to normal” is setting people up for disappointment and worse mental health problems. We have to acknowledge that we are grieving, and that grief is the ball in the box.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:25 AM on August 19, 2021 [50 favorites]
Realizing your pants don’t fit isn’t the most profound revelation, I know. But, oddly-fitting trousers were the apt physical metaphor I needed to realize the enormity of the last two years. Mentally, physically, I’d undergone a change. In every way, there is more of me today than there was in February 2020. More grief, more distrust, more anger, more anxiety, more hope, more empathy…more everything.
This article made me think about how I felt after my pregnancy losses. I’ve talked about them many times on MeFi, partly because I want to destigmatize pregnancy loss, partly because it’s how I continue to process what has happened to me, and partly because my losses are events that caused an indelible, immutable change in me. I am a completely different person because I’ve been pregnant twice and both times ended without a living child. I’m not a better or worse person, but I’m different. I’m more empathetic, I think, but I’m also more subdued, less optimistic, and more prone to depression.
Thanks to a lucky combination of a great support network and a general predisposition to baseline good mental health, I still enjoy my life and derive pleasure from it, but the point is, I can’t and haven’t gone back to “normal” (the way I was before my losses, when I still thought I would become a mother). Yet that’s what I think most people hoped I would be able to do—I think with the best intentions they genuinely hoped I could grieve my losses and then go back to the way I was. But that’s not how grief works.
Both physically and psychologically, I've undergone a profound change. My body will always remind me that I’ve been pregnant twice. Like the author found, clothes fit differently now, and I have some chronic health issues resulting from those pregnancies. Psychologically, there’s a part of me that will always grieve and is always ready to pop out and remind me of what I’ve lost. To live in this world is to be surrounded by children and parent-child relationships. It’s less triggering than it used to be, but it’s always a reminder and probably always will be. I can usually deal with the inevitable pangs of longing now without sinking into a deep days-long depression, but it’s always lurking. I don’t imagine that’s very different from most people who have suffered profound loss.
And now I think people are finding the pandemic has affected them the same way. There’s been a lot of loss in this pandemic: loss of life, loss of trust in institutions and fellow humans (sometimes family and friends), loss of a sense of safety, loss of livelihood. I think people should indeed expect they’ll be permanently changed by this experience, and I think foolishly hoping that things will just “go back to normal” is setting people up for disappointment and worse mental health problems. We have to acknowledge that we are grieving, and that grief is the ball in the box.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:25 AM on August 19, 2021 [50 favorites]
I think everyone's probably damaged these days. I am mourning the pre-pandemic relationships I used to have because we just don't seem to be able to connect in the same way once not being able to hang out on a regular basis in person was eliminated as an option. I'm trying to rebuild with the 2-3 people who have briefly surfaced here and there in the last few months, but if we're going back into lockdown again, then that'll all go to hell again. One person in particular seems to have been so damaged by everything that there may be no recovering from this. Sigh.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:37 AM on August 19, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:37 AM on August 19, 2021 [8 favorites]
Never had a favorite bar. Guess I was a loser even before the time of covid.
My favorite bar closed about a year before the pandemic and I've been adrift since then so the pandemic really didn't interfere with that all that much. This is what happens when you want an huge number of taps and comfortable cushioned chairs at tables for two. I feel like I am a dinosaur whose prey went extinct the year before the meteor hit.
posted by srboisvert at 11:47 AM on August 19, 2021 [4 favorites]
My favorite bar closed about a year before the pandemic and I've been adrift since then so the pandemic really didn't interfere with that all that much. This is what happens when you want an huge number of taps and comfortable cushioned chairs at tables for two. I feel like I am a dinosaur whose prey went extinct the year before the meteor hit.
posted by srboisvert at 11:47 AM on August 19, 2021 [4 favorites]
the lackadaisical attitude with which we've accepted COVID-19 as yet another "unavoidable" source of uncertainty and chaos in an increasingly unstable and insecure world.
I’ve been thinking more lately about my relatives who seem to be taking this viewpoint, and trying to figure out how to get through to them. Which involves a bit of trying to understand their point of view, as frustrating and angering as that is to have to do. (It’s never the assholes being forced to understand other people.) I have theory, with some basis in experience but not fully tested, that my relatives in question are actually so much less able to deal with the stressors of regular life and then the pandemic on top of everything that they’ve been engaging in magical thinking and don’t in fact actually believe COVID-19 to be … real? actually dangerous? They definitely think intellectually that the risk has been exaggerated, but that seems to be based on paying attention to or searching out things (on Facebook, of course) that confirm what they are feeling emotionally. And I get the impression that they’re not letting themselves actually believe or feel that the risk is even as large as they are willing to intellectually agree to. Basically like the whole pandemic is too big, and has broken their brains in terms of their ability to take it in and respond or deal with it.
posted by eviemath at 12:15 PM on August 19, 2021 [27 favorites]
I’ve been thinking more lately about my relatives who seem to be taking this viewpoint, and trying to figure out how to get through to them. Which involves a bit of trying to understand their point of view, as frustrating and angering as that is to have to do. (It’s never the assholes being forced to understand other people.) I have theory, with some basis in experience but not fully tested, that my relatives in question are actually so much less able to deal with the stressors of regular life and then the pandemic on top of everything that they’ve been engaging in magical thinking and don’t in fact actually believe COVID-19 to be … real? actually dangerous? They definitely think intellectually that the risk has been exaggerated, but that seems to be based on paying attention to or searching out things (on Facebook, of course) that confirm what they are feeling emotionally. And I get the impression that they’re not letting themselves actually believe or feel that the risk is even as large as they are willing to intellectually agree to. Basically like the whole pandemic is too big, and has broken their brains in terms of their ability to take it in and respond or deal with it.
posted by eviemath at 12:15 PM on August 19, 2021 [27 favorites]
I have theory, with some basis in experience but not fully tested, that my relatives in question are actually so much less able to deal with the stressors of regular life and then the pandemic on top of everything that they’ve been engaging in magical thinking and don’t in fact actually believe COVID-19 to be … real? actually dangerous?
I have suspected this for quite a while now -- that a whole lot of the COVID denialism out there is actually coming from a place of deep, intense, fiercely suppressed fear. That fear is being transmuted into anger, and projected onto government authorities, health experts, and all the people who are actually responding constructively and pro-socially to the pandemic... because to acknowledge that what any of them are advocating, and doing, makes sense, is to acknowledge that the pandemic is real, and very dangerous.
Why would you feel compelled to scream to the world that you "refuse to live in fear!1!!1!" if you aren't, on some level, absolutely terrified?
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 12:26 PM on August 19, 2021 [56 favorites]
I have suspected this for quite a while now -- that a whole lot of the COVID denialism out there is actually coming from a place of deep, intense, fiercely suppressed fear. That fear is being transmuted into anger, and projected onto government authorities, health experts, and all the people who are actually responding constructively and pro-socially to the pandemic... because to acknowledge that what any of them are advocating, and doing, makes sense, is to acknowledge that the pandemic is real, and very dangerous.
Why would you feel compelled to scream to the world that you "refuse to live in fear!1!!1!" if you aren't, on some level, absolutely terrified?
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 12:26 PM on August 19, 2021 [56 favorites]
Now, uncertainty is a guiding force in my life. I plan tentatively and humbly, if at all.
This line resonated with me. I am reluctant to plan because I am less resilient when arrangements fall through. I don't know how to tell myself that this too shall pass when so many institutions and businesses with relevance to my life have just...given up on trying to keep people safe. I can't give my kids a date when things will be better. I feel the weight of planning like I did when my kids were small, not knowing if it will be a good day or a bad day, having to take all kinds of extra measures to get out the door, cutting short outings because of acute circumstances. I'm older now than I was then--but have learned nothing, evidently. The people who side-eyed me for baby-wearing now side-eye me for mask-wearing, and tell me that God or their immune systems will protect them, that they're not going to give their kids ANY vaccines after this, that they're going to hold classes in person and not have teachers wear masks and how in the fuck can I plan around so much irresponsibility and anger and poor judgment from others? I am trying not to let my community's wish for normality/political prejudices interfere with following what experts suggest, even if those suggestions change as we go. But planning is fraught.
posted by MonkeyToes at 12:31 PM on August 19, 2021 [10 favorites]
This line resonated with me. I am reluctant to plan because I am less resilient when arrangements fall through. I don't know how to tell myself that this too shall pass when so many institutions and businesses with relevance to my life have just...given up on trying to keep people safe. I can't give my kids a date when things will be better. I feel the weight of planning like I did when my kids were small, not knowing if it will be a good day or a bad day, having to take all kinds of extra measures to get out the door, cutting short outings because of acute circumstances. I'm older now than I was then--but have learned nothing, evidently. The people who side-eyed me for baby-wearing now side-eye me for mask-wearing, and tell me that God or their immune systems will protect them, that they're not going to give their kids ANY vaccines after this, that they're going to hold classes in person and not have teachers wear masks and how in the fuck can I plan around so much irresponsibility and anger and poor judgment from others? I am trying not to let my community's wish for normality/political prejudices interfere with following what experts suggest, even if those suggestions change as we go. But planning is fraught.
posted by MonkeyToes at 12:31 PM on August 19, 2021 [10 favorites]
In every way, there is more of me today than there was in February 2020. More grief, more distrust, more anger, more anxiety, more hope, more empathy…more everything. For the first time, trapped at home and not performatively busy, I’ve been able to recognize these emotions. I’ve learned more about myself and what I love and what I fear in the last eighteen months than I learned in my first 33 years. In brief moments, these revelations have been life-affirming. But many have been quite painful. I’m not okay yet.
Boy, do I ever related to this. In my case, the pandemic came on the heels of a few of the most difficult years in my life, in which personal and work situations had already made me a far more anxious person than ever before.
Trying to learn to live with the anxiety was already difficult, and the confinement and lassitude of the pandemic have made things worse in some ways. But I'm gradually trying to figure out how to use my heightened awareness of my own feelings, bad and good, to help me better evaluate and shape my life choices, and to understand my own and other people's negative behaviors in more empathetic and constructive ways.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 12:46 PM on August 19, 2021 [9 favorites]
Boy, do I ever related to this. In my case, the pandemic came on the heels of a few of the most difficult years in my life, in which personal and work situations had already made me a far more anxious person than ever before.
Trying to learn to live with the anxiety was already difficult, and the confinement and lassitude of the pandemic have made things worse in some ways. But I'm gradually trying to figure out how to use my heightened awareness of my own feelings, bad and good, to help me better evaluate and shape my life choices, and to understand my own and other people's negative behaviors in more empathetic and constructive ways.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 12:46 PM on August 19, 2021 [9 favorites]
As much as we talk about not wanting to return to the office, I think combining work and home has bad side-effects for some of us that we don't really know how to deal with yet.
Yeah, I'm back in the office now, and I've wanted to be back in since we started working from home. I'm not good at putting boundaries in place at the best of times, but living alone and the difference between work and home being whether I'm sat in front of the laptop? They went out the window.
On a more positive note, I went to my first gig since February 2020 last weekend. Normally be one a fortnight at least. I knew I'd been missing it, but I'd kind of suppressed exactly how much that release means to me. Came close to tears, which is even more unusual considering it was a trashy thrash hardcore gig.
posted by MattWPBS at 1:01 PM on August 19, 2021 [3 favorites]
Yeah, I'm back in the office now, and I've wanted to be back in since we started working from home. I'm not good at putting boundaries in place at the best of times, but living alone and the difference between work and home being whether I'm sat in front of the laptop? They went out the window.
On a more positive note, I went to my first gig since February 2020 last weekend. Normally be one a fortnight at least. I knew I'd been missing it, but I'd kind of suppressed exactly how much that release means to me. Came close to tears, which is even more unusual considering it was a trashy thrash hardcore gig.
posted by MattWPBS at 1:01 PM on August 19, 2021 [3 favorites]
I also just (voluntarily) went back into the (mostly empty) office and it feels so great to come home and actually be home, and not in a quantum state of both work and home.
What the author says is right, you can't go back in time, that's not how time works. And people who whine about why can't things "go back to normal" worry me, because they're not living in the present, where the rest of us have to live.
posted by meowzilla at 1:22 PM on August 19, 2021 [14 favorites]
What the author says is right, you can't go back in time, that's not how time works. And people who whine about why can't things "go back to normal" worry me, because they're not living in the present, where the rest of us have to live.
posted by meowzilla at 1:22 PM on August 19, 2021 [14 favorites]
they’ve been engaging in magical thinking and don’t in fact actually believe COVID-19 to be … real?
This is absolutely true of the right, where their media's been encouraging them to distrust non-right-wing media. Same with the struggle for more gun control: until gun violence/the Covid actually touches somebody they know, it's fake news, crisis actors, etc.
posted by Rash at 1:29 PM on August 19, 2021 [2 favorites]
This is absolutely true of the right, where their media's been encouraging them to distrust non-right-wing media. Same with the struggle for more gun control: until gun violence/the Covid actually touches somebody they know, it's fake news, crisis actors, etc.
posted by Rash at 1:29 PM on August 19, 2021 [2 favorites]
My reaction has been to become absolutely obsessed with early retirement. I got pissed off at my employer's reckless, maskless, vaccineless RTO plan and in a fit of rage looked into exactly how much I had been spending to see what the worst case would be if I quit. To my amazement, my spending in 2020 was 50% of what I thought I needed. And 2020, while a little boring, was not that far off of the life I'd like to be living, one of cooking at home, reading library books, and walking the dog a lot, as opposed to buying uncomfortable work clothes, rushing home at lunch to let the dog pee, and spending most of the day with anti-masking Covid deniers.
That sent me down a rabbithole of figuring out exactly what I need to quit this fuckery forever, and it's way less than I thought. I've trimmed my expenses even more and I'm hardly spending anything, pouring every spare penny into my retirement accounts. I think part of what's going on with me is that these optimizing activities are giving me a feeling of control while living in raging covid hotspot that's choked with wildfire smoke. But at the same time, it's real. Every step I take is getting me closer to having real choice about how I spend my days.
posted by HotToddy at 1:34 PM on August 19, 2021 [33 favorites]
That sent me down a rabbithole of figuring out exactly what I need to quit this fuckery forever, and it's way less than I thought. I've trimmed my expenses even more and I'm hardly spending anything, pouring every spare penny into my retirement accounts. I think part of what's going on with me is that these optimizing activities are giving me a feeling of control while living in raging covid hotspot that's choked with wildfire smoke. But at the same time, it's real. Every step I take is getting me closer to having real choice about how I spend my days.
posted by HotToddy at 1:34 PM on August 19, 2021 [33 favorites]
Because of COVID I quit my job, but it was mostly a matter of accepting that I was ready to retire. I couldn't do a job that I loved at the expense of my peace of mind while juggling a grandchild who couldn't be vaccinated and a husband who was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer last summer.
I stopped going to my sports practices because a hobby wasn't worth losing my life over.
I started attending my group meetings on Zoom because we were all making the effort and it was good to see people even if not in person, but honestly I was less and less interested in those people. Less and less patient with them.
I was already journaling every day and meditating, but I added daily stretching and long long walks outside, and I decided to finish all the novels and other projects I started but couldn't finish when I was working. One novel is almost finished because I developed the habit of working on it a little bit every day in the pandemic. My house is strangely tidy and organized.
Like HotToddy I have spent so very little during the pandemic that we're living comfortably on our Social Security and savings, plus my husband's little part-time income, and I figured out that we can afford to live here even if he decides he's done.
It was when things began to open up that I realized how much I had changed. When I went back into a room with other people, all the vestigial social skills I had crafted over years and years seemed to have withered. I'm back to blurting, to being awkward, to being difficult and wayward and quirky.
I'm pretty much okay with being myself, mind you. I'm not sure I can handle "regular life," though. Next week I have to take a plane flight to another state because I'm back competing in my sport. The contractors are arriving to do the work I need to keep my husband (and, eventually, myself) in our home as we get older and sicker, and they will be IN MY HOUSE. I am going in person to my group meetings, though when there I'm hosting Zoom for the people who are worse off than I am (a friend with immune compromised parents she's caring for, people with unvaccinatable children, etc.). I was already pretty solitary before all this started, but now I pretty much hate socializing.
posted by Peach at 1:38 PM on August 19, 2021 [12 favorites]
I stopped going to my sports practices because a hobby wasn't worth losing my life over.
I started attending my group meetings on Zoom because we were all making the effort and it was good to see people even if not in person, but honestly I was less and less interested in those people. Less and less patient with them.
I was already journaling every day and meditating, but I added daily stretching and long long walks outside, and I decided to finish all the novels and other projects I started but couldn't finish when I was working. One novel is almost finished because I developed the habit of working on it a little bit every day in the pandemic. My house is strangely tidy and organized.
Like HotToddy I have spent so very little during the pandemic that we're living comfortably on our Social Security and savings, plus my husband's little part-time income, and I figured out that we can afford to live here even if he decides he's done.
It was when things began to open up that I realized how much I had changed. When I went back into a room with other people, all the vestigial social skills I had crafted over years and years seemed to have withered. I'm back to blurting, to being awkward, to being difficult and wayward and quirky.
I'm pretty much okay with being myself, mind you. I'm not sure I can handle "regular life," though. Next week I have to take a plane flight to another state because I'm back competing in my sport. The contractors are arriving to do the work I need to keep my husband (and, eventually, myself) in our home as we get older and sicker, and they will be IN MY HOUSE. I am going in person to my group meetings, though when there I'm hosting Zoom for the people who are worse off than I am (a friend with immune compromised parents she's caring for, people with unvaccinatable children, etc.). I was already pretty solitary before all this started, but now I pretty much hate socializing.
posted by Peach at 1:38 PM on August 19, 2021 [12 favorites]
I have theory, with some basis in experience but not fully tested, that my relatives in question are actually so much less able to deal with the stressors of regular life and then the pandemic on top of everything that they’ve been engaging in magical thinking and don’t in fact actually believe COVID-19 to be … real? actually dangerous?
I take the pandemic very seriously and have been extra careful throughout the entire past 500+ days. Thanks to friends in Asia I knew what was coming ahead of time even. I've never stopped masking indoors. I've met up with very few friends. I got vaccinated as soon as I could.
Yet there was and is tremendous social conformity pressure and even with an intellectual awareness of the threat and my particular risks I still felt and feel it like an insanely strong primal psychological tractor beam trying to pull me away from being careful and cautious because almost nobody else (that I see) was/is being as careful and cautious as me.
I think a huge part is that covid-19 is invisible, while reckless peoples behavior is not, resulting in a disproportionate empirical weighting towards reckless disbelief/denial. In addition to the virus itself being invisible most of the consequences of covid-19 are also invisible. Patients are sequestered away in hospitals out of sight. Most media sources have not filmed the actual suffering of people painfully suffocating to death. So people get to read news about business closures with actual pictures or videos of the businesses, their owners, employees and customers complaining or lamenting but the grief of relatives of the dead has been largely out of sight because of visual media's weird notions of grief hygiene and privacy. My own older brother died in February and I couldn't visit my family, there was no funeral or anything and it still feels weird and unreal.
So if you are low information seeker who largely operates at a level of social observation Covid-19 will probably seem completely ridiculous until it punches you right in the face and even then you may still not believe it. You won't see the people being careful because they are not out and about to be seen. You will mostly see the careless. This will even further skew your assessments.
I am also seeing this now in people on the left who are in denial about the seriousness of the coming wave and the risk of breakthrough infections because they have checked out of thinking for themselves now that Biden is in charge. They got the vax and they can see that it is now Chet Hank's White Boy Summer and they can live their lives free and easy because that is what they see others doing so. Meanwhile the tsunami of the delta wave is heading north from Florida, Missouri, Louisiana and Texas with accelerating speed. September is going to be an absolute shitshow of covid-19 and psychic trauma for people who thought the vaccines were going to return their lives to normal.
My takeaway is that after this pandemic I am going to get involved in local politics and be absolutely relentless about it because these fuckers control every important part of my survival and they fucked up huge and are continuing to fuck up huge and I am not going to tolerate or accept it. Particularly my local alderman who is the vice mayor of Chicago and reopened his restaurant to indoor dining at the height of the pandemic in violation of the city mandates which he likely had a hand in weakening the punishments for.
posted by srboisvert at 1:43 PM on August 19, 2021 [53 favorites]
I take the pandemic very seriously and have been extra careful throughout the entire past 500+ days. Thanks to friends in Asia I knew what was coming ahead of time even. I've never stopped masking indoors. I've met up with very few friends. I got vaccinated as soon as I could.
Yet there was and is tremendous social conformity pressure and even with an intellectual awareness of the threat and my particular risks I still felt and feel it like an insanely strong primal psychological tractor beam trying to pull me away from being careful and cautious because almost nobody else (that I see) was/is being as careful and cautious as me.
I think a huge part is that covid-19 is invisible, while reckless peoples behavior is not, resulting in a disproportionate empirical weighting towards reckless disbelief/denial. In addition to the virus itself being invisible most of the consequences of covid-19 are also invisible. Patients are sequestered away in hospitals out of sight. Most media sources have not filmed the actual suffering of people painfully suffocating to death. So people get to read news about business closures with actual pictures or videos of the businesses, their owners, employees and customers complaining or lamenting but the grief of relatives of the dead has been largely out of sight because of visual media's weird notions of grief hygiene and privacy. My own older brother died in February and I couldn't visit my family, there was no funeral or anything and it still feels weird and unreal.
So if you are low information seeker who largely operates at a level of social observation Covid-19 will probably seem completely ridiculous until it punches you right in the face and even then you may still not believe it. You won't see the people being careful because they are not out and about to be seen. You will mostly see the careless. This will even further skew your assessments.
I am also seeing this now in people on the left who are in denial about the seriousness of the coming wave and the risk of breakthrough infections because they have checked out of thinking for themselves now that Biden is in charge. They got the vax and they can see that it is now Chet Hank's White Boy Summer and they can live their lives free and easy because that is what they see others doing so. Meanwhile the tsunami of the delta wave is heading north from Florida, Missouri, Louisiana and Texas with accelerating speed. September is going to be an absolute shitshow of covid-19 and psychic trauma for people who thought the vaccines were going to return their lives to normal.
My takeaway is that after this pandemic I am going to get involved in local politics and be absolutely relentless about it because these fuckers control every important part of my survival and they fucked up huge and are continuing to fuck up huge and I am not going to tolerate or accept it. Particularly my local alderman who is the vice mayor of Chicago and reopened his restaurant to indoor dining at the height of the pandemic in violation of the city mandates which he likely had a hand in weakening the punishments for.
posted by srboisvert at 1:43 PM on August 19, 2021 [53 favorites]
This piece oddly made me think a lot about how the trauma really goes back to 2016 and Trump getting elected. That was when I really started internalizing that there was no certainty, no hope to build a long-term future on. Everything just lurched from horror to atrocity for years. Like, a meme went around with the title “Me checking the news in the morning” and it was a frame from “Star Trek: The Next Generation” with Capt. Picard yelling “DAMAGE REPORT!” That was literally how I felt every morning.
COVID was just the item in the parade of horrors that finally directly affected my privileged middle-class white-woman bubble.
In some ways it was less horrifying than the other things, because I had some control with COVID. I could wear a mask, wash my hands, work from home, avoid other people, and eventually, get a vaccine. It wasn’t like, children are being taken from their parents and thrown into prison camps, and I can do nothing but feel sick and call my representative who will ignore every word I say.
I don’t know. I don’t know if there ever can be any processing all of this. I don’t know if there ever can be a “normal” again. Since 2014, when my father-in-law became paralyzed and I learned that in America, you’re totally on your own to deal with care needs in that situation — life has been just a series of demonstrations that everything I thought I could depend on will be ripped out from under me.
The best we can hope for is the occasional moment where we can distract ourselves enough to forget the horror and feel almost like things are normal again, just for a little bit, until it all comes crashing back in. I wish I didn’t believe that, but I do.
When my father-in-law was dying — I remember clinging to the occasional moment where a friend would come and take us out to get food and we could talk about something other than death for a few minutes. Death was the reality, and we knew we’d have to go back to dealing with that reality in half an hour, but for just a little bit we could pretend there was something else. That kind of moment seems like all we’ve got now.
posted by snowmentality at 1:48 PM on August 19, 2021 [39 favorites]
COVID was just the item in the parade of horrors that finally directly affected my privileged middle-class white-woman bubble.
In some ways it was less horrifying than the other things, because I had some control with COVID. I could wear a mask, wash my hands, work from home, avoid other people, and eventually, get a vaccine. It wasn’t like, children are being taken from their parents and thrown into prison camps, and I can do nothing but feel sick and call my representative who will ignore every word I say.
I don’t know. I don’t know if there ever can be any processing all of this. I don’t know if there ever can be a “normal” again. Since 2014, when my father-in-law became paralyzed and I learned that in America, you’re totally on your own to deal with care needs in that situation — life has been just a series of demonstrations that everything I thought I could depend on will be ripped out from under me.
The best we can hope for is the occasional moment where we can distract ourselves enough to forget the horror and feel almost like things are normal again, just for a little bit, until it all comes crashing back in. I wish I didn’t believe that, but I do.
When my father-in-law was dying — I remember clinging to the occasional moment where a friend would come and take us out to get food and we could talk about something other than death for a few minutes. Death was the reality, and we knew we’d have to go back to dealing with that reality in half an hour, but for just a little bit we could pretend there was something else. That kind of moment seems like all we’ve got now.
posted by snowmentality at 1:48 PM on August 19, 2021 [39 favorites]
I feel US and EU leadership has mostly failed us terribly during this crisis
I've always known the US is fucked, but seeing the EU just completely fumble their response really hit me. Like, shiiiiit, all the places I kinda looked up to failed repeatedly, at almost every opportunity? Argh, so much for those dreams.
...so now I keep fantasizing about moving to St. Helena, except being all isolated like that (that same isolation being the ostensibly desirable feature here) probably means it's just another island hellscape like Pitcairn.
I've even considered Kerguelen, except, well, y'know how rational that would be (horrible death in winter being, realistically, the only outcome for me unless I happened to starve or break a leg before winter set in).
posted by aramaic at 1:57 PM on August 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
I've always known the US is fucked, but seeing the EU just completely fumble their response really hit me. Like, shiiiiit, all the places I kinda looked up to failed repeatedly, at almost every opportunity? Argh, so much for those dreams.
...so now I keep fantasizing about moving to St. Helena, except being all isolated like that (that same isolation being the ostensibly desirable feature here) probably means it's just another island hellscape like Pitcairn.
I've even considered Kerguelen, except, well, y'know how rational that would be (horrible death in winter being, realistically, the only outcome for me unless I happened to starve or break a leg before winter set in).
posted by aramaic at 1:57 PM on August 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
I've had, within the parameters of what is possible in my neck of the woods during this time, a pretty good summer. I'm double-vaxxed, I've been going places, seeing people, doing things...it's been as close to "normal" as I've felt since the pandemic began, and I have experienced times of genuine happiness and joy. Most of these social events have been outside, but I have eaten inside a restaurant a couple of times and was invited to eat indoors by some friends of mine. I think maybe I've had a slightly easier time adjusting to current conditions because I've been working outside my home for about a year now (I'm a public librarian, so there's really no way for me to do my job remotely). I guess my outlook on things boils down to the fact that I've followed public health guidelines as best I can, have done what I can to protect myself and my loved ones, and that meeting up with people who are also vaccinated - especially outdoors - falls within my personal limits of acceptable risk at the moment. I'm also trying to wring as much happiness out of the present moment while I can because I don't think it's going to last, a prospect which depresses me because I'm a pretty social person, my friends and family are my life, and a life where I can't see them in person honestly isn't much of a life.
posted by The Card Cheat at 2:38 PM on August 19, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by The Card Cheat at 2:38 PM on August 19, 2021 [8 favorites]
I’m scared of people now. I see human beings as dangerous until proven otherwise. It makes me so sad.
posted by obfuscation at 3:28 PM on August 19, 2021 [13 favorites]
posted by obfuscation at 3:28 PM on August 19, 2021 [13 favorites]
Why are so many knowledge workers quitting their jobs?
Because being able to do takes money and other privileges, which many knowledge workers have but many other people who'd desperately love to have been able to do so last year don't.
I'm curious how much of trend it actually is though. A significant chunk of the people I know are well paid knowledge worker in their mid 40s and the only one who retired or downshifted was someone who'd been long since saving for early retirement and just happened to hit her number to do so a few months ago. If anything, most of the people in my cohort have stepped up to a more advanced role during the past 18 months.
posted by Candleman at 3:56 PM on August 19, 2021
Because being able to do takes money and other privileges, which many knowledge workers have but many other people who'd desperately love to have been able to do so last year don't.
I'm curious how much of trend it actually is though. A significant chunk of the people I know are well paid knowledge worker in their mid 40s and the only one who retired or downshifted was someone who'd been long since saving for early retirement and just happened to hit her number to do so a few months ago. If anything, most of the people in my cohort have stepped up to a more advanced role during the past 18 months.
posted by Candleman at 3:56 PM on August 19, 2021
I’m scared of people now. I see human beings as dangerous until proven otherwise. It makes me so sad.
We fled our country when I was a little kid because people threatened our life, and I've never developed a very elaborate model of the goodness (or badness) of people. It seems very much circumstantial. Nevertheless I've always felt that even though one has to prepare for the worst, it always makes sense to hope for the best. I resent that some of these days it's beginning to feel like only a sucker would hope for the best.
posted by dmh at 4:41 PM on August 19, 2021 [3 favorites]
We fled our country when I was a little kid because people threatened our life, and I've never developed a very elaborate model of the goodness (or badness) of people. It seems very much circumstantial. Nevertheless I've always felt that even though one has to prepare for the worst, it always makes sense to hope for the best. I resent that some of these days it's beginning to feel like only a sucker would hope for the best.
posted by dmh at 4:41 PM on August 19, 2021 [3 favorites]
"Basically like the whole pandemic is too big, and has broken their brains in terms of their ability to take it in and respond or deal with it."
Hell, I feel like that these days.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:04 PM on August 19, 2021 [2 favorites]
Hell, I feel like that these days.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:04 PM on August 19, 2021 [2 favorites]
I resent that some of these days it's beginning to feel like only a sucker would hope for the best.
I read somewhere the other day that you have only to light a single match to fill a dark room with light.
posted by aniola at 6:59 PM on August 19, 2021 [11 favorites]
I read somewhere the other day that you have only to light a single match to fill a dark room with light.
posted by aniola at 6:59 PM on August 19, 2021 [11 favorites]
On that subject, I'm feeling more like Lucy these days.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:45 PM on August 19, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:45 PM on August 19, 2021 [3 favorites]
I have, for the first time perhaps, developed an acute sense of home and place and family.Interesting. I have no doubt that is true, but I've had the exact opposite experience. I'm frustrated by my home.
Most days I feel both. I find myself not wanting to stay home, where I live by myself anyway, but not really wanting to venture beyond a very few places that feel relatively safe, either. Every day feels like a perpetually restless Groundhog Day.
posted by a Rrose by any other name at 8:56 AM on August 20, 2021 [5 favorites]
The acute sense I had of being trapped in home-and-place-and-family that I had before the pandemic (when I was about to throw all this knowledge work crap over for a tour in the Peace Corps) has intensified, but also mellowed, since almost everyone else I know is also trapped, and if they're not, they're freaking the hell out about having to move or change, and if they're not freaking out, their risk tolerance is so different from my own that I'm not jealous of their progress so much as I am praying that they continue to beat the odds.
My existing trauma/attachment issues/anxiety/whatever has probably gotten a lot worse, but only if "worse" is judged against pre-pandemic expectations of activities and achievements. So, yeah, if I was thrown back into the snake pit of pre-pandemic life in my post-pandemic bodybrain, I would burn out immediately. Based on local health department staffing plans in my city (and of course, I use the word "plans" loosely), it looks like I've got until about May 2022 to figure out how to approach the new and different post-pandemic snake pit, full as it will be of other likewise-traumatized people and organizations in various stages of denial about how Very Not Okay they are.
posted by All hands bury the dead at 10:21 AM on August 20, 2021 [1 favorite]
My existing trauma/attachment issues/anxiety/whatever has probably gotten a lot worse, but only if "worse" is judged against pre-pandemic expectations of activities and achievements. So, yeah, if I was thrown back into the snake pit of pre-pandemic life in my post-pandemic bodybrain, I would burn out immediately. Based on local health department staffing plans in my city (and of course, I use the word "plans" loosely), it looks like I've got until about May 2022 to figure out how to approach the new and different post-pandemic snake pit, full as it will be of other likewise-traumatized people and organizations in various stages of denial about how Very Not Okay they are.
posted by All hands bury the dead at 10:21 AM on August 20, 2021 [1 favorite]
I've read a bunch of articles in the last pandemic or so that I think about a lot. They're each related to COVID, but about its psychological effects, not about death rates and politics. (All links are from archive.today so none are paywalled.)
It’s OK to Grieve for the Small Losses of a Lost Year [NYT - March 15, 2021]
The pandemic is showing us which friendships are worth keeping [WAPO - January 22, 2021]
The Age of Reopening Anxiety: What if we’re scared to go back to normal life? [New Yorker - June 3, 2021]
We’re All Socially Awkward Now [NYT - September 1, 2020]
posted by bendy at 6:21 PM on August 20, 2021 [3 favorites]
It’s OK to Grieve for the Small Losses of a Lost Year [NYT - March 15, 2021]
The pandemic is showing us which friendships are worth keeping [WAPO - January 22, 2021]
The Age of Reopening Anxiety: What if we’re scared to go back to normal life? [New Yorker - June 3, 2021]
We’re All Socially Awkward Now [NYT - September 1, 2020]
posted by bendy at 6:21 PM on August 20, 2021 [3 favorites]
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This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
Going to be thinking more on this.
/endramble
posted by zerobyproxy at 8:50 AM on August 19, 2021 [9 favorites]