Trapped In The Margins

I’m about five years too late with this post but it’s taken about that long to begin to process my own trauma around the pandemic. I see that the world has decided to collectively move on from the lockdown days of the early pandemic. Honestly, it never felt appropriate to comment on what was happening in real time because I was too busy trying to survive.

On a random night, my inner child cried alone in a bathroom praying for a future that has to be better than the present. There was no such luck. The future became even worse than you or I could ever imagine. There have been wars and genocides. Pollution became worse and recycling was an illusion. Every year became significantly worse than the one before but 2020 will be the year from hell.

I remember sighing into my New Year’s Eve drink on December 31, 2019. We counted down as a collective until the clock struck midnight. Happy New Year! The start of the roaring 20s. January was the tabula rasa I prayed for but I grossly underestimated what was to come.

I remember not taking it too seriously. A new virus that the news anchor called Covid-19 or coronavirus. The news downplayed it at first. I sat at my front desk job and laughed at a friend when she described her flu symptoms to me. I jokingly said, “oh, you must have Covid.” It turns out I was right. I would start masking shortly after that conversation and I haven’t really taken my mask off since then.

As I reflect back on the past five years, I realized something. I never stopped being outside. Actually, I was outside a lot more for the first time in my life because no one was around. I was deemed an essential worker so I was allowed to drive to work when lockdown shut everything down. The world was eerily quiet. It reminded me of the video game series Silent Hill. I remember driving on a foggy day to work and there were barely five cars on the highway. That drive to work comes back to me from time to time, especially when dealing with ridiculous drivers and traffic.

The world has moved on now but there’s still a part of me stuck in that time. I still choose to mask to avoid any kind of illness. I recognize how I’ve been left behind in that sense. It makes me feel like a social pariah most times but people have always stared at me. The only difference now is that I prioritize myself instead of letting people’s stares bother me.