suddenly, when there’s an opening, all these feelings come up,
May 23, 2021 8:23 PM Subscribe
“As hard as the initial trauma is,” she said, “it’s the aftermath that destroys people.” If you’ve been swimming furiously for a year, you don’t expect to finally reach dry land and feel like you’re drowning.
via @kottke
See also: "The Spanish Flu Epidemic and Mental Health"
By 1919 and 1920, physicians and researchers in Great Britain were already reporting a marked rise in nervous symptoms and illnesses among some patients recovering from influenza infection; among other symptoms, depression, neuropathy, neurasthenia, meningitis, degenerative changes in nerve cells, and a decline in visual acuity were cited.
See also: "The Spanish Flu Epidemic and Mental Health"
By 1919 and 1920, physicians and researchers in Great Britain were already reporting a marked rise in nervous symptoms and illnesses among some patients recovering from influenza infection; among other symptoms, depression, neuropathy, neurasthenia, meningitis, degenerative changes in nerve cells, and a decline in visual acuity were cited.
Mod note: One deleted; let's avoid big derails on medical / mental health issues based on casual, un-researched speculation, please. Thanks.
posted by taz (staff) at 2:53 AM on May 24, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by taz (staff) at 2:53 AM on May 24, 2021 [4 favorites]
Good article. It focuses on the US, but I think that most of what is described is pretty universal, or soon will be (in those countries that haven't yet been able to vaccinate as much).
Personally, what helped me was to realise (as I did a year or so ago, triggered by another good article someone posted on here) that it's okay and normal to feel grief about all the people, chances and moments that we have lost. It's a healthy response to an unhealthy situation.
posted by Too-Ticky at 3:04 AM on May 24, 2021 [14 favorites]
Personally, what helped me was to realise (as I did a year or so ago, triggered by another good article someone posted on here) that it's okay and normal to feel grief about all the people, chances and moments that we have lost. It's a healthy response to an unhealthy situation.
posted by Too-Ticky at 3:04 AM on May 24, 2021 [14 favorites]
Three factors seem to protect [crisis sufferers]: confidence in authorities, a sense of belonging, and community solidarity. In the U.S., the pandemic eroded all three. It reduced trust in institutions, separated people from their loved ones, and widened political divisions. It was something of a self-reinforcing disaster, exacerbating the conditions that make recovery harder.
For me- it was so much this. Absence of shared resources that could reliably be counted on to provide guidance through the storm, worsened by those who actively tried to subvert the situation for personal/political gain. 2020 pulled back the curtain to reveal the ugliest truths about us as a nation and as a culture. It pushed me hard into a place where I felt I could not trust anyone or anything. I've been in that place before because of other past experiences, and it's not a good place to be.
2020 activated old responses and behaviors I thought I'd moved past. It undid so much personal work and internal struggle. In hindsight it's a bit easier for me to recognize this as what actually happened; but so far that realization has not helped me move forward much. It feels strange to consider needing therapy to recover on a personal level from something that happened on a global scale. But that's how I dealt with these same exact feelings and outcomes when they were present in the past. Yet the ability to trust and seek help from others is precisely what's been so damaged. So far I've not been able to figure any of it out.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 3:10 AM on May 24, 2021 [47 favorites]
For me- it was so much this. Absence of shared resources that could reliably be counted on to provide guidance through the storm, worsened by those who actively tried to subvert the situation for personal/political gain. 2020 pulled back the curtain to reveal the ugliest truths about us as a nation and as a culture. It pushed me hard into a place where I felt I could not trust anyone or anything. I've been in that place before because of other past experiences, and it's not a good place to be.
2020 activated old responses and behaviors I thought I'd moved past. It undid so much personal work and internal struggle. In hindsight it's a bit easier for me to recognize this as what actually happened; but so far that realization has not helped me move forward much. It feels strange to consider needing therapy to recover on a personal level from something that happened on a global scale. But that's how I dealt with these same exact feelings and outcomes when they were present in the past. Yet the ability to trust and seek help from others is precisely what's been so damaged. So far I've not been able to figure any of it out.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 3:10 AM on May 24, 2021 [47 favorites]
The Pandemic Speaks (The Tyee, May 21)
When I appear, I pick my time carefully. I enter the picture when your elites lose their consensus, grand empires reach a border too far, institutions lose their practicality, refugees clog the byways and the climate changes.posted by dmh at 3:32 AM on May 24, 2021 [9 favorites]
We've both been fully vaccinated for a while now and really haven't changed much about our lifestyle. We still haven't eaten inside a restaurant, had a couple sidewalk meals, and aren't going to go so parties or bars anytime soon. I'll still wear a mask when I go into a store.
My big takeaway from the last 14 months is that a huge chunk of my fellow country people are horribly selfish, short sighted and obviously don't give a shit about the rest of us or that more than half a million of our fellow Americans have died. I'm not going to get over that feeling for a long time.
posted by octothorpe at 4:19 AM on May 24, 2021 [168 favorites]
My big takeaway from the last 14 months is that a huge chunk of my fellow country people are horribly selfish, short sighted and obviously don't give a shit about the rest of us or that more than half a million of our fellow Americans have died. I'm not going to get over that feeling for a long time.
posted by octothorpe at 4:19 AM on May 24, 2021 [168 favorites]
A small editorial note, the FPP doesn't mention covid, I had to click through to find out what it was about. Try mentioning the subject of the post in the post.
We've been rather fortunate here, my state in Australia has only had 7 deaths. We've had a number of lockdowns, people have been out of work, and public events were cancelled. I've kept this remarkable sign as a souvenir of the time dancing was prohibited. But we didn't have the deaths. As onerous as the restrictions were, they were effective, and far more preferable than the alternative.
So we could be considered part of the control group in future research. It'll be interesting to see how the aftershocks play out with all the trauma and PTSD yet to be realised, how we may fare in regard to less fortunate nations.
There is a little survivor's guilt, vicariously seeing the columns of smoke rise over Indian cities when we watch the news. I'm very sorry for all the people affected. I've also seen a bit of denialism, which I suppose is much easier when the toll is so low.
posted by adept256 at 5:14 AM on May 24, 2021 [5 favorites]
We've been rather fortunate here, my state in Australia has only had 7 deaths. We've had a number of lockdowns, people have been out of work, and public events were cancelled. I've kept this remarkable sign as a souvenir of the time dancing was prohibited. But we didn't have the deaths. As onerous as the restrictions were, they were effective, and far more preferable than the alternative.
So we could be considered part of the control group in future research. It'll be interesting to see how the aftershocks play out with all the trauma and PTSD yet to be realised, how we may fare in regard to less fortunate nations.
There is a little survivor's guilt, vicariously seeing the columns of smoke rise over Indian cities when we watch the news. I'm very sorry for all the people affected. I've also seen a bit of denialism, which I suppose is much easier when the toll is so low.
posted by adept256 at 5:14 AM on May 24, 2021 [5 favorites]
A full year before the pandemic, I lost a loved one after a very long illness. The loss was too much of a shock to comprehend initially, and in the weeks which followed I found myself getting more and more anxious about when I was 'allowed' to grieve and how would people react if I was to exceed some generally-permissible window for grieving by the time I got around to fully processing what had happened. Would they be accepting of my grief and give me a pass, or would they tell me that it's been N months, life goes on, and I should get over it?
One thing which really moved me during the pre-Inauguration Day ceremony at the reflecting pool was President Biden remarking that this wouldn't be the last time we as a nation would gather like that to remember those who were lost to the pandemic. As great as it is to celebrate accomplishments like mask restrictions being relaxed and vaccinations being distributed, I'm a little disappointed we as a nation have yet to revisit the loss because I think we need to as an acknowledgement that people are still processing the grief and it's going to take a long time to heal.
There really should be a national holiday afforded with the same reverence as the holidays we have to honor soldiers. It should be an annual occurrence with the names of victims being read aloud on town commons and flags lowered to half staff. There should be parades where doctors, nurses and other health care workers get to walk in their scrubs while waiving to people.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:14 AM on May 24, 2021 [29 favorites]
One thing which really moved me during the pre-Inauguration Day ceremony at the reflecting pool was President Biden remarking that this wouldn't be the last time we as a nation would gather like that to remember those who were lost to the pandemic. As great as it is to celebrate accomplishments like mask restrictions being relaxed and vaccinations being distributed, I'm a little disappointed we as a nation have yet to revisit the loss because I think we need to as an acknowledgement that people are still processing the grief and it's going to take a long time to heal.
There really should be a national holiday afforded with the same reverence as the holidays we have to honor soldiers. It should be an annual occurrence with the names of victims being read aloud on town commons and flags lowered to half staff. There should be parades where doctors, nurses and other health care workers get to walk in their scrubs while waiving to people.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:14 AM on May 24, 2021 [29 favorites]
“When you get a chance to realize that your safety or your family’s safety is no longer at risk, you think, What was this experience like for me?” said Gold, the Washington University psychiatrist. “Your answer could be I haven’t slept in months, or I feel miserable, or My kid is really angry and upset all the time.
The experience for me was that the worst parts of me resurfaced. Addictions, hopelessness, the burden of the self. I didn’t lose anyone close and my life is currently 80% back to normal, our income didn’t suffer. The overlay of guilt that I didn’t respond well and let myself go despite all of the privileges I have is a vicious cycle. I’m still not good at gratitude and that is no joke. I wish I could wave a wand, or do the hard work and get results but it’s not where I’m at most days. Some days of peace are truly bliss.
posted by waving at 5:43 AM on May 24, 2021 [29 favorites]
The experience for me was that the worst parts of me resurfaced. Addictions, hopelessness, the burden of the self. I didn’t lose anyone close and my life is currently 80% back to normal, our income didn’t suffer. The overlay of guilt that I didn’t respond well and let myself go despite all of the privileges I have is a vicious cycle. I’m still not good at gratitude and that is no joke. I wish I could wave a wand, or do the hard work and get results but it’s not where I’m at most days. Some days of peace are truly bliss.
posted by waving at 5:43 AM on May 24, 2021 [29 favorites]
“Around the one-year anniversary of COVID, a number of journalists asked me, ‘It’s been a year; why aren’t we adjusted to this?’” Silver told me. “I found that question very unusual.”
I wonder if this is going to end up being the stimulus that ultimately makes people recognize how badly they feel. I'm already seeing it in my workplace--now that everyone on my team is vaccinated, I pick up on how often my boss subtly hints at "as we're getting back to normal" when referencing in-person meetings and workshops and the like. As soon as the thought comes to mind, I have an immediate reaction: oh no, no no no.
The pandemic hasn’t been a one-off disaster but “a slow, recurrent onslaught of worsening things,” adds Tamar Rodney, from the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, who studies trauma. “We can’t expect people to go through that and for everyone to come out the other side being fine. People suffered in between, and those effects must be addressed, even if we’re walking around maskless.”
A funny thing about this is how the pandemic, oddly enough, served a a kind of a reset button for some people (myself included) who were Going Through Things when the pandemic began. I started therapy for the first time in my life in January 2019. I started feeling like I was getting back on my feet in January 2020. I had my last weekly therapy session with my therapist the first Friday in March last year. I told him I wanted to see if I could apply the skills I'd found in therapy on my own. He said he thought that was a great idea. We talked about the emerging pandemic, and then a week later the city was the first in the US to call for a lockdown. I know it's unpleasant to say, but there was some sort of rising-tide-lifts-all-boats for me, but the inverse. Suddenly everyone was in bad shape, against their will, and struggling with isolation and its consequences. Bizarrely, I felt like I was somehow well-equipped for that part of the suite of challenges brought about by the pandemic. I'd been on my own roller coaster of worsening, I hadn't come out fine but I'd come out with a mindset focused on acquiring resilience, recognizing painful thoughts and emotions in myself, enduring what had felt unendurable. I'd addressed those effects.
People don’t make decisions about the present in a temporal vacuum. They integrate across their past experiences. They learn.
Somehow the mental tension of the pandemic came at a time when I was able to use it as a prompt for change. I sold my house, a decision I'd struggled with for almost two years. I let go of my ex-husband, and I felt that letting go. The lockdown gave me the space and motivation to develop and polish some of my relationships. I had a stunning sense come back to me, after a couple years of it being inaccessible to me, of this is it. This is my life. And I left a lot behind. My adopted home city, the state I'd lived in for 15 years, the country I was born in, because I saw a window of opportunity to do this and had spent a year locked in my tiny home thinking, how do I want to live?
I hope that as many people as possible get to experience and acknowledge transformation from this past year in terms that are not exclusively negative. I think the urge now is for stories to come out about the ongoing damage of a very isolated and dramatically bad year. I hope there are stories, too, about the other side of the spectrum.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 5:47 AM on May 24, 2021 [42 favorites]
I wonder if this is going to end up being the stimulus that ultimately makes people recognize how badly they feel. I'm already seeing it in my workplace--now that everyone on my team is vaccinated, I pick up on how often my boss subtly hints at "as we're getting back to normal" when referencing in-person meetings and workshops and the like. As soon as the thought comes to mind, I have an immediate reaction: oh no, no no no.
The pandemic hasn’t been a one-off disaster but “a slow, recurrent onslaught of worsening things,” adds Tamar Rodney, from the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, who studies trauma. “We can’t expect people to go through that and for everyone to come out the other side being fine. People suffered in between, and those effects must be addressed, even if we’re walking around maskless.”
A funny thing about this is how the pandemic, oddly enough, served a a kind of a reset button for some people (myself included) who were Going Through Things when the pandemic began. I started therapy for the first time in my life in January 2019. I started feeling like I was getting back on my feet in January 2020. I had my last weekly therapy session with my therapist the first Friday in March last year. I told him I wanted to see if I could apply the skills I'd found in therapy on my own. He said he thought that was a great idea. We talked about the emerging pandemic, and then a week later the city was the first in the US to call for a lockdown. I know it's unpleasant to say, but there was some sort of rising-tide-lifts-all-boats for me, but the inverse. Suddenly everyone was in bad shape, against their will, and struggling with isolation and its consequences. Bizarrely, I felt like I was somehow well-equipped for that part of the suite of challenges brought about by the pandemic. I'd been on my own roller coaster of worsening, I hadn't come out fine but I'd come out with a mindset focused on acquiring resilience, recognizing painful thoughts and emotions in myself, enduring what had felt unendurable. I'd addressed those effects.
People don’t make decisions about the present in a temporal vacuum. They integrate across their past experiences. They learn.
Somehow the mental tension of the pandemic came at a time when I was able to use it as a prompt for change. I sold my house, a decision I'd struggled with for almost two years. I let go of my ex-husband, and I felt that letting go. The lockdown gave me the space and motivation to develop and polish some of my relationships. I had a stunning sense come back to me, after a couple years of it being inaccessible to me, of this is it. This is my life. And I left a lot behind. My adopted home city, the state I'd lived in for 15 years, the country I was born in, because I saw a window of opportunity to do this and had spent a year locked in my tiny home thinking, how do I want to live?
I hope that as many people as possible get to experience and acknowledge transformation from this past year in terms that are not exclusively negative. I think the urge now is for stories to come out about the ongoing damage of a very isolated and dramatically bad year. I hope there are stories, too, about the other side of the spectrum.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 5:47 AM on May 24, 2021 [42 favorites]
I liked the article and saw a lot I could recognize from my own life.
It reminded me of the articles I have seen about all the people who are saying (whether or not they intend to follow through) that they want to make big changes as soon as the pandemic is over, like quitting their job, switching to a new career, moving far away, traveling, etc. Everyone I know has been basically holding on with a white-knuckled grip all year to try and keep their lives together, but eventually we will get to the point where you don't need to struggle that hard and then people will need to confront how things have changed for them.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:20 AM on May 24, 2021 [9 favorites]
It reminded me of the articles I have seen about all the people who are saying (whether or not they intend to follow through) that they want to make big changes as soon as the pandemic is over, like quitting their job, switching to a new career, moving far away, traveling, etc. Everyone I know has been basically holding on with a white-knuckled grip all year to try and keep their lives together, but eventually we will get to the point where you don't need to struggle that hard and then people will need to confront how things have changed for them.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:20 AM on May 24, 2021 [9 favorites]
I was pretty dismissive of a friend saying we needed to grieve. I didn't lose anyone, my job is fine, we're vaccinated.
But then I realized I was struggling to complete simple tasks because my motivation and ability to handle stress have vanished in a puff of smoke.
I'm starting therapy again.
posted by emjaybee at 6:29 AM on May 24, 2021 [27 favorites]
But then I realized I was struggling to complete simple tasks because my motivation and ability to handle stress have vanished in a puff of smoke.
I'm starting therapy again.
posted by emjaybee at 6:29 AM on May 24, 2021 [27 favorites]
I've had a couple friends/neighbors die in the last few weeks for reasons that stem not so much from Covid itself but as outgrowth from the trauma over the last year. That it happened just as the rest of us are starting to gather and be with each other again is particularly brutal.
We've been through some things, collectively. I haven't made it through a day without crying since last March. I'm doing okay (though fourteen months later and I still can't find a therapist). It helps that I've been able to hug people again. It helps to have people in my space listening to music, eating together, laughing, being human.
It's going to take a long time to process all this and we're all just now on the first front end.
posted by thivaia at 6:50 AM on May 24, 2021 [6 favorites]
We've been through some things, collectively. I haven't made it through a day without crying since last March. I'm doing okay (though fourteen months later and I still can't find a therapist). It helps that I've been able to hug people again. It helps to have people in my space listening to music, eating together, laughing, being human.
It's going to take a long time to process all this and we're all just now on the first front end.
posted by thivaia at 6:50 AM on May 24, 2021 [6 favorites]
I truly do not understand how anyone could have lived through the year 2020 and not become a communist.
posted by Mayor West at 6:55 AM on May 24, 2021 [69 favorites]
posted by Mayor West at 6:55 AM on May 24, 2021 [69 favorites]
I restarted therapy and feel much more equipped to better utilize the time and put in the work I need to do. And as an obnoxious extrovert, I came to love the moments of time I got to spend on myself during the worst parts of the pandemic. These were gifts borne from my privilege to work remotely, to have a house that’s my own with a spouse and partner who is loving. So those moments and that finding of my inner introvert and caretaker of my self has been something I am very grateful for.
But with me throughout had also been pure rage at the lies, the anti-maskers and feelings of immense sadness and guilt at my place in life and endlessly feeling like I am incapable of doing anything measurable to change the structures around me that do not support people in need. The system is so shattered and has been for so long. I am still mourning how clear it was shown through this experience that our society is a rotten, selfish and lonely place with little handholds of light for a lucky few. The reckoning that should be happening and the mass understanding of a need to fix that brokenness has been replaced by “get back to normal,” endlessly repeated like a hymn or a hex.
But why return to normal? What was normal about anything we had before this, and why is it worth keeping? How do so many people seem so incapable of reflection?
posted by glaucon at 6:58 AM on May 24, 2021 [34 favorites]
But with me throughout had also been pure rage at the lies, the anti-maskers and feelings of immense sadness and guilt at my place in life and endlessly feeling like I am incapable of doing anything measurable to change the structures around me that do not support people in need. The system is so shattered and has been for so long. I am still mourning how clear it was shown through this experience that our society is a rotten, selfish and lonely place with little handholds of light for a lucky few. The reckoning that should be happening and the mass understanding of a need to fix that brokenness has been replaced by “get back to normal,” endlessly repeated like a hymn or a hex.
But why return to normal? What was normal about anything we had before this, and why is it worth keeping? How do so many people seem so incapable of reflection?
posted by glaucon at 6:58 AM on May 24, 2021 [34 favorites]
My big takeaway from the last 14 months is that a huge chunk of my fellow country people are horribly selfish, short sighted and obviously don't give a shit about the rest of us or that more than half a million of our fellow Americans have died. I'm not going to get over that feeling for a long time.
This, too, is something with which I've struggled with a great deal, and recent posts here about AIDS denialism, this article from Emergence on cholera in the 19th century, and the occasional historical bits on anti-mask sentiments during the Spanish Flu pandemic have sent me back and forth between numb comfort ("huh, this seems to be way it's always been") to despair ("shit, this seems to be the way it's always been"). Neither seems particularly helpful; the playbook seems pretty well established.
If I believed (and still believe) that wearing a mask and taking reasonable precautions constitutes as basic act of charity towards others, what am I to understand about your decision to refuse the same? How is a community preserved afterward, with such clear signs of inner dispositions made available for all to see? Can it be?
posted by jquinby at 7:00 AM on May 24, 2021 [30 favorites]
This, too, is something with which I've struggled with a great deal, and recent posts here about AIDS denialism, this article from Emergence on cholera in the 19th century, and the occasional historical bits on anti-mask sentiments during the Spanish Flu pandemic have sent me back and forth between numb comfort ("huh, this seems to be way it's always been") to despair ("shit, this seems to be the way it's always been"). Neither seems particularly helpful; the playbook seems pretty well established.
If I believed (and still believe) that wearing a mask and taking reasonable precautions constitutes as basic act of charity towards others, what am I to understand about your decision to refuse the same? How is a community preserved afterward, with such clear signs of inner dispositions made available for all to see? Can it be?
posted by jquinby at 7:00 AM on May 24, 2021 [30 favorites]
About a month ago, a few weeks after my second shot, all the gravity of the isolation of the past year hit me like a freight train. I realized that not only has this last year been more traumatic than I thought, but that it had surfaced up long standing trauma that I thought I had overcome, relating to my existing pre-Covid social anxiety. The changes in my life over last year have left me in a place where my old coping strategies aren't going to work anymore. There's so much that I want back from the before times, and I know my social anxiety is going to get even more in the way of living the life I know I want to live than it had before.
I had my first therapy session to learn how to deal with all of this on Friday. It's good to know, at least, that I am not the only person in this boat.
posted by SansPoint at 7:18 AM on May 24, 2021 [13 favorites]
I had my first therapy session to learn how to deal with all of this on Friday. It's good to know, at least, that I am not the only person in this boat.
posted by SansPoint at 7:18 AM on May 24, 2021 [13 favorites]
Things I have learned:
* i never want to do something I love for work because what I love is useless and expendable, especially in the event of emergency. My work protected all of our asses from Covid spectacularly. I may not want to be doing what I do any more, but my outcome was so much better than if I say, was making a living off selling crafts on Etsy or had been a paid actor as my job at the time of pandemic. You need to be useful, not easily budget cut.
* You can only save your own ass. You have to figure out risk for yourself. I stayed agoraphobic for over a year to not catch it and that was worth it. People gave me so much shit about it, but it worked.
* Stop trying with people who can't or won't respond to you. The friends I made or kept during pandemic were the people who wanted to talk online. I kept trying with my new, more "in person" friends that I wanted to keep and it didn't really work. I don't know if those relationships will ever recover, but it makes me feel like shit to try and then be ignored for whatever reason. I have no way to know if they are just depressed or now hate my guts if they can't or won't tell me. I will no longer keep trying and initiating. If it's only me who is trying, then they probably just do not care enough. I am way dialing back my hopes and expectations and especially the desires to be close to them. They do not want to. If there is a future for those relationships, it will be only friendships when we are in the same location, they sadly will not last or be in the rest of my life.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:22 AM on May 24, 2021 [19 favorites]
* i never want to do something I love for work because what I love is useless and expendable, especially in the event of emergency. My work protected all of our asses from Covid spectacularly. I may not want to be doing what I do any more, but my outcome was so much better than if I say, was making a living off selling crafts on Etsy or had been a paid actor as my job at the time of pandemic. You need to be useful, not easily budget cut.
* You can only save your own ass. You have to figure out risk for yourself. I stayed agoraphobic for over a year to not catch it and that was worth it. People gave me so much shit about it, but it worked.
* Stop trying with people who can't or won't respond to you. The friends I made or kept during pandemic were the people who wanted to talk online. I kept trying with my new, more "in person" friends that I wanted to keep and it didn't really work. I don't know if those relationships will ever recover, but it makes me feel like shit to try and then be ignored for whatever reason. I have no way to know if they are just depressed or now hate my guts if they can't or won't tell me. I will no longer keep trying and initiating. If it's only me who is trying, then they probably just do not care enough. I am way dialing back my hopes and expectations and especially the desires to be close to them. They do not want to. If there is a future for those relationships, it will be only friendships when we are in the same location, they sadly will not last or be in the rest of my life.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:22 AM on May 24, 2021 [19 favorites]
@adept256 A small editorial note, the FPP doesn't mention covid,
I had to click through to find out what it was about.
I often complain about mystery links at Metafilter, and apologize for my hypocrisy.
This passage felt like a kick in the gut: "Three factors seem to protect them: confidence in authorities, a sense of belonging, and community solidarity. In the U.S., the pandemic eroded all three."
posted by mecran01 at 7:31 AM on May 24, 2021 [11 favorites]
I had to click through to find out what it was about.
I often complain about mystery links at Metafilter, and apologize for my hypocrisy.
This passage felt like a kick in the gut: "Three factors seem to protect them: confidence in authorities, a sense of belonging, and community solidarity. In the U.S., the pandemic eroded all three."
posted by mecran01 at 7:31 AM on May 24, 2021 [11 favorites]
> How do so many people seem so incapable of reflection?
There are a lot of people who would rather die or kill than reflect, because to gaze inward would be to stare into the abyss. That's part of the appeal of authoritarian politicians around the world; "if I'm in charge, you - a person who is invested in the maintenance of the status quo - will not have to think about why and how things are the way they are, and *definitely* not about how or why things should change." This is why people get so angry about things like the 1619 Project, Indigenous land acknowledgements, etc..
I have been extremely fortunate and privileged during the pandemic; nobody I know personally has gotten sick, nobody (as far as I know) has had serious money troubles, etc., so the trauma for me has been largely personal (aside from the continual anxiety that resulted from constant bad/worrying news and the evidence others have spoken of in this thread that many of my fellow citizens are indifferent or even actively hostile towards public health measures and/or the entire concept of "society"); missing my friends and family, time and experiences lost, and most of all the realization that a number of my friendships (some of which were already more of a hopeful concept than a reality) are pretty much done for good and not coming back, even if there was a switch marked "BACK TO NORMAL" that someone could flip.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:36 AM on May 24, 2021 [11 favorites]
There are a lot of people who would rather die or kill than reflect, because to gaze inward would be to stare into the abyss. That's part of the appeal of authoritarian politicians around the world; "if I'm in charge, you - a person who is invested in the maintenance of the status quo - will not have to think about why and how things are the way they are, and *definitely* not about how or why things should change." This is why people get so angry about things like the 1619 Project, Indigenous land acknowledgements, etc..
I have been extremely fortunate and privileged during the pandemic; nobody I know personally has gotten sick, nobody (as far as I know) has had serious money troubles, etc., so the trauma for me has been largely personal (aside from the continual anxiety that resulted from constant bad/worrying news and the evidence others have spoken of in this thread that many of my fellow citizens are indifferent or even actively hostile towards public health measures and/or the entire concept of "society"); missing my friends and family, time and experiences lost, and most of all the realization that a number of my friendships (some of which were already more of a hopeful concept than a reality) are pretty much done for good and not coming back, even if there was a switch marked "BACK TO NORMAL" that someone could flip.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:36 AM on May 24, 2021 [11 favorites]
What was normal about anything we had before this, and why is it worth keeping? How do so many people seem so incapable of reflection?
A lot of times MetaFilter likes to look at the 50,000 foot view, the macro view of the world and say it's bad and awful and capitalism sucks and whatever. And yeah, that view is sometimes correct. Our (in the US) public health infrastructure is terrible. Safety nets are more holes than net, etc. Etc etc forever, really.
But I think when most people are asking for normal, we just wanted to be able to hug our family (chosen or otherwise) without worrying about killing them, get a daily routine back (even if it's working for The Man), grab a coffee/tea/beverage at our favorite spot, and not worry about washing your groceries before you use them or should you leave your mail in the mailbox for a few days. Watching a baseball game on TV without worrying if your entire team or the stadium workers are going to get sick. That micro-level normal is the one most people want to return to and keep.
posted by kimberussell at 7:42 AM on May 24, 2021 [23 favorites]
A lot of times MetaFilter likes to look at the 50,000 foot view, the macro view of the world and say it's bad and awful and capitalism sucks and whatever. And yeah, that view is sometimes correct. Our (in the US) public health infrastructure is terrible. Safety nets are more holes than net, etc. Etc etc forever, really.
But I think when most people are asking for normal, we just wanted to be able to hug our family (chosen or otherwise) without worrying about killing them, get a daily routine back (even if it's working for The Man), grab a coffee/tea/beverage at our favorite spot, and not worry about washing your groceries before you use them or should you leave your mail in the mailbox for a few days. Watching a baseball game on TV without worrying if your entire team or the stadium workers are going to get sick. That micro-level normal is the one most people want to return to and keep.
posted by kimberussell at 7:42 AM on May 24, 2021 [23 favorites]
Speaking of lost friendships, people who weren't there, I am reminded of this article about "the trauma of being dropped and left alone"
posted by mecran01 at 7:43 AM on May 24, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by mecran01 at 7:43 AM on May 24, 2021 [6 favorites]
What was normal about anything we had before this, and why is it worth keeping?
it's a good question, but the belief in going back to "normal" isn't based on what's going on - the train's gone on to another set of tracks and who knows where it's headed
we are not going back to "normal" - just what we have seen people do in response to all the problems and controversies is enough to prevent that
it's part of what's making decisions rather hard for me right now - the worst part of that is the biggest of those decisions, retirement, was one i would have been faced with even if there had been no pandemic - now it seems a lot more complicated - is inflation going to ruin everything? - is the recovery going to stall? is the chaos going to increase even more?
the only good thing about my situation is that there's an actual material advantage to procrastinating if i do it long enough - if i can take it
posted by pyramid termite at 7:56 AM on May 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
it's a good question, but the belief in going back to "normal" isn't based on what's going on - the train's gone on to another set of tracks and who knows where it's headed
we are not going back to "normal" - just what we have seen people do in response to all the problems and controversies is enough to prevent that
it's part of what's making decisions rather hard for me right now - the worst part of that is the biggest of those decisions, retirement, was one i would have been faced with even if there had been no pandemic - now it seems a lot more complicated - is inflation going to ruin everything? - is the recovery going to stall? is the chaos going to increase even more?
the only good thing about my situation is that there's an actual material advantage to procrastinating if i do it long enough - if i can take it
posted by pyramid termite at 7:56 AM on May 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
Very good article. I definitely trust some people to be there for me, but you have to earn that. And some frankly have not earned it.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:57 AM on May 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:57 AM on May 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
A friend of mine said the other day, "oh, I have friends I haven't talked to for 3, 5, 10 years, but if I called them, it'd be like nothing had changed!" I just don't understand that because once someone's been out of my life for years, we almost always don't really connect again. I have one friend who has actually made the effort to come back into my life, ever. But everyone else, maybe you run into them once and you might have one conversation and then you're done for another 10 years. You don't think to call them or tell them what's going on in your life or vice versa, you don't try to hang out, nothing. How the heck do you trust that someone you haven't talked to in years still wants to?
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:15 AM on May 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:15 AM on May 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
kimberussell: That's basically what I mean when I say "back to normal". I want to go to indoor concerts again, in small clubs. I want to go to dance parties. I want to hang with friends indoors, unmasked, and feel safe.
posted by SansPoint at 8:15 AM on May 24, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by SansPoint at 8:15 AM on May 24, 2021 [6 favorites]
I lost my best friend to COVID, my job to my own inability to cope during his illness and subsequent death, and then the *gestures around* rest of it. I feel like a zombie. My skin doesn't fit anymore. I NEED my friends, but they are so annoyed that I am "letting this get to me" ummmm WUT?
posted by lextex at 8:18 AM on May 24, 2021 [18 favorites]
posted by lextex at 8:18 AM on May 24, 2021 [18 favorites]
One thing that's weirdly been helping is the facebook memories thing where it shows you what you were posting about a year ago. That terrifying holding pattern, that sudden dislocation where everything closed, where kids left school one Friday in March and never went back, that was all real. I experienced all that. And I can recognize myself from a year ago. And knowing what comes next, being able to see what I was facing (that last-year me didn't know about), it's helping me feel like I can put a lot of the experiences in context. As things start to open back up, it's helping me reflect back on the beginning of the pandemic. And it's helping me understand what things seemed enormous in the moment but I don't even remember now, and what things continue to affect me emotionally a year later.
Like, when my siblings and I all agreed we needed to convince our parents to take this more seriously and not travel, and then they all chickened out, and so I had to read my parents the riot act (while my brothers stood in the corner and one waited until I was entirely done and then said "I agree," portraits in courage, I tell you). The memory of it still hits me in the gut, how frightened we were, and how this was my first real experience of my parents aging into that time when the adult children start having to take care of their parents, and it was a very real reversal because I was using all my parents' arguments from when *I* was an irresponsible teenager, and just the look of shock on their faces as I pointed out how they'd have reacted if I'd behaved like this in college ... I wouldn't have thought that would be one of the big emotional moments of the pandemic that will live in my gut forever, but it's going to. And obviously I'm going to drag my siblings about this for the rest of our lives (portraits in courage, guys!), and it was incredibly distressing and I get upset thinking about it, but it was also a really vivid demonstration that my family is a team, that I didn't go through this pandemic alone and I won't go through my parents' aging alone. My siblings and I all back-channeled and marshalled our arguments, I laid them out, our parents heard us out. We shared a Covid bubble for much of the pandemic with my brothers (not during full lockdowns when it was household-only, and one of them had Covid around Thanksgiving so a big gap there), and it's been lifesaving and sanity saving, for our kids to be able to see their cousins, for my SIL to have help with her Covid newborn, for us all to have someone available to run errands for us as necessary, to be able to socialize with someone who doesn't live in the house.
I've come out of this with greater trust in my local community authorities -- they busted their butts, coordinated across government units (schools, parks, libraries, towns), brought on public health specialists from the local hospital. They communicated well and clearly and made smart decisions about our local community and its likely transmission hotspots, and worked as a group to mitigate problems resulting from shutdowns. We shut down a week before the state shutdown (and Illinois was pretty early on shutdowns). My local library has been an amazing lifeline. And I feel pretty good about my state authorities. But I also watched communities in other parts of the state not taking any of this seriously, bucking and ignoring state laws and CDC guidance. Sheriffs openly saying they would not enforce any mask mandates or social distancing requirements even if ordered. Local health departments refusing to pull operating permits from restaurants and bars that defied lockdowns. And I don't know how we come back from any of that, how we restore trust in government, how we insist bureauocrats do their jobs, how we unmake the police from partisan enforcers to ... something a lot less dangerous.
I'm starting to worry about how my kids (and everyone's kids) come out of this. Like, there's enough breathing room I can have those forward-looking worries now. I think they've been remarkably resilient. They've been asked to do really hard things this year, and they've done them well and shown a lot of maturity in stepping up. But also ... they've all "missed" a year of their childhood and barely socialized in fourteen months. They've had parents under incredible stress. And how does my parenting come out of it? I very, very desperately want to be alone in the silence in my house ... but I can hardly even imagine what it will be like to have them all go to school in person, all day, with me not there in the next room. (I feel like that's going to be a pretty high-anxiety day for me.) Do I become too overprotective? Do I overcompensate and become too unattentive? It's unrealistic to think this hasn't changed my parenting, but I don't know how it has yet, and that's another thing to worry about ...
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:34 AM on May 24, 2021 [20 favorites]
Like, when my siblings and I all agreed we needed to convince our parents to take this more seriously and not travel, and then they all chickened out, and so I had to read my parents the riot act (while my brothers stood in the corner and one waited until I was entirely done and then said "I agree," portraits in courage, I tell you). The memory of it still hits me in the gut, how frightened we were, and how this was my first real experience of my parents aging into that time when the adult children start having to take care of their parents, and it was a very real reversal because I was using all my parents' arguments from when *I* was an irresponsible teenager, and just the look of shock on their faces as I pointed out how they'd have reacted if I'd behaved like this in college ... I wouldn't have thought that would be one of the big emotional moments of the pandemic that will live in my gut forever, but it's going to. And obviously I'm going to drag my siblings about this for the rest of our lives (portraits in courage, guys!), and it was incredibly distressing and I get upset thinking about it, but it was also a really vivid demonstration that my family is a team, that I didn't go through this pandemic alone and I won't go through my parents' aging alone. My siblings and I all back-channeled and marshalled our arguments, I laid them out, our parents heard us out. We shared a Covid bubble for much of the pandemic with my brothers (not during full lockdowns when it was household-only, and one of them had Covid around Thanksgiving so a big gap there), and it's been lifesaving and sanity saving, for our kids to be able to see their cousins, for my SIL to have help with her Covid newborn, for us all to have someone available to run errands for us as necessary, to be able to socialize with someone who doesn't live in the house.
I've come out of this with greater trust in my local community authorities -- they busted their butts, coordinated across government units (schools, parks, libraries, towns), brought on public health specialists from the local hospital. They communicated well and clearly and made smart decisions about our local community and its likely transmission hotspots, and worked as a group to mitigate problems resulting from shutdowns. We shut down a week before the state shutdown (and Illinois was pretty early on shutdowns). My local library has been an amazing lifeline. And I feel pretty good about my state authorities. But I also watched communities in other parts of the state not taking any of this seriously, bucking and ignoring state laws and CDC guidance. Sheriffs openly saying they would not enforce any mask mandates or social distancing requirements even if ordered. Local health departments refusing to pull operating permits from restaurants and bars that defied lockdowns. And I don't know how we come back from any of that, how we restore trust in government, how we insist bureauocrats do their jobs, how we unmake the police from partisan enforcers to ... something a lot less dangerous.
I'm starting to worry about how my kids (and everyone's kids) come out of this. Like, there's enough breathing room I can have those forward-looking worries now. I think they've been remarkably resilient. They've been asked to do really hard things this year, and they've done them well and shown a lot of maturity in stepping up. But also ... they've all "missed" a year of their childhood and barely socialized in fourteen months. They've had parents under incredible stress. And how does my parenting come out of it? I very, very desperately want to be alone in the silence in my house ... but I can hardly even imagine what it will be like to have them all go to school in person, all day, with me not there in the next room. (I feel like that's going to be a pretty high-anxiety day for me.) Do I become too overprotective? Do I overcompensate and become too unattentive? It's unrealistic to think this hasn't changed my parenting, but I don't know how it has yet, and that's another thing to worry about ...
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:34 AM on May 24, 2021 [20 favorites]
Every time I see anyone or any entity pushing any sort of "hey it's over, we're back to normal!" agenda I instantly look for how they are hoping to make a profit or get me to give up something. Because no one in their right mind can be pushing for that. Nothing is over.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 8:38 AM on May 24, 2021 [29 favorites]
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 8:38 AM on May 24, 2021 [29 favorites]
I want to go to indoor concerts again, in small clubs. I want to go to dance parties. I want to hang with friends indoors, unmasked, and feel safe.
The club is (not quite but soon) open.
They've announced a bunch a shows over the last few weeks, most in September/October. I've bought tickets to a few (Dinosaur Jr, Lucy Dacus, Big Thief) even if it still feels like a thing that carries a whiff of wishful thinking. Out and about I've heard more music recently, people playing outside, people jamming out in their cars with the windows open, the sounds from open patios and parks. Feeling it come back, anticipating the moment when it really and truly might is one of the best things about being alive right now.
I said before that I cry every day. That's true. But sometimes the tears are the happy kind. I got a little choked up about two weeks ago when I ordered a cocktail at my favorite bar and went outside to sit on a pretty crowded patio with the old reliable Friday night gang (we've been meeting regularly via Zoom on Fridays for cocktails for over a year--sometimes for hours). The relief of it just washed over me like a wave.
I'm pretty sure I will get a bit weepy the first time I walk in the club too. I'm certain I won't be the only one.
posted by thivaia at 8:56 AM on May 24, 2021 [9 favorites]
The club is (not quite but soon) open.
They've announced a bunch a shows over the last few weeks, most in September/October. I've bought tickets to a few (Dinosaur Jr, Lucy Dacus, Big Thief) even if it still feels like a thing that carries a whiff of wishful thinking. Out and about I've heard more music recently, people playing outside, people jamming out in their cars with the windows open, the sounds from open patios and parks. Feeling it come back, anticipating the moment when it really and truly might is one of the best things about being alive right now.
I said before that I cry every day. That's true. But sometimes the tears are the happy kind. I got a little choked up about two weeks ago when I ordered a cocktail at my favorite bar and went outside to sit on a pretty crowded patio with the old reliable Friday night gang (we've been meeting regularly via Zoom on Fridays for cocktails for over a year--sometimes for hours). The relief of it just washed over me like a wave.
I'm pretty sure I will get a bit weepy the first time I walk in the club too. I'm certain I won't be the only one.
posted by thivaia at 8:56 AM on May 24, 2021 [9 favorites]
I think that some people push for that because they desparately need it to be true. But it's not.
posted by Too-Ticky at 8:56 AM on May 24, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by Too-Ticky at 8:56 AM on May 24, 2021 [6 favorites]
A lot of folks want to feel like everything is back to normal. And they see the folks wearing masks and not acting like everything is normal again, and it's a reminder that it isn't. I bet they feel kinda judged too - and... they're not wrong .
posted by wotsac at 8:58 AM on May 24, 2021 [9 favorites]
posted by wotsac at 8:58 AM on May 24, 2021 [9 favorites]
How the heck do you trust that someone you haven't talked to in years still wants to?
Recently a very close friend died in a freak car accident. I felt like I had to "do something" in reaction, so I made a two week project of tracking down everybody I could find that I have known in the last four decades, and saying: "Don't die in a freak car accident". That included people with whom I did not have a positive relationship. The surprising result was that every single person responded positively.
posted by StickyCarpet at 9:16 AM on May 24, 2021 [13 favorites]
Recently a very close friend died in a freak car accident. I felt like I had to "do something" in reaction, so I made a two week project of tracking down everybody I could find that I have known in the last four decades, and saying: "Don't die in a freak car accident". That included people with whom I did not have a positive relationship. The surprising result was that every single person responded positively.
posted by StickyCarpet at 9:16 AM on May 24, 2021 [13 favorites]
About a month ago, a few weeks after my second shot, all the gravity of the isolation of the past year hit me like a freight train.
Yes, this. Since becoming fully vaccinated, I have been feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. It's...a lot.
posted by medusa at 9:23 AM on May 24, 2021 [10 favorites]
Yes, this. Since becoming fully vaccinated, I have been feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. It's...a lot.
posted by medusa at 9:23 AM on May 24, 2021 [10 favorites]
"How the heck do you trust that someone you haven't talked to in years still wants to?"
Probing questions with shared degree friends on innate instinct over a shared trauma. These little bonds of revival are sometimes the milk of human social existence. I personally think it happens semi-frequently in most people's lives. It's certainly happened in mine.
posted by firstdaffodils at 9:23 AM on May 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
Probing questions with shared degree friends on innate instinct over a shared trauma. These little bonds of revival are sometimes the milk of human social existence. I personally think it happens semi-frequently in most people's lives. It's certainly happened in mine.
posted by firstdaffodils at 9:23 AM on May 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
I guess in my case things will never be the same. Because my previous employer, a public school district, was hard hit by a revenue shortfall, due to parents holding their children back from enrollment, I accepted an early retirement offer. Even when things "get back to normal," I'll still be isolated in retirement forever.
posted by SPrintF at 9:25 AM on May 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by SPrintF at 9:25 AM on May 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
I like how this article opens. The mindfuck of last year when things were getting worse than ever...and the U.S. business world kind of shrugged and started opening up...I feel like that will be lost to revisionist history. The fear, the realization that no, we're not going to do what's safe or right because the 1% weren't dying so oh well...that ALONE was traumatic. And that's only one aspect, one moment I can point to out of dozens of terrifying moments. I feel like as I process I need to write down each terrifying turn to remember all of it.
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:09 AM on May 24, 2021 [13 favorites]
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:09 AM on May 24, 2021 [13 favorites]
thivaia: I went to my first in-person live music event, an outdoor concert in Brooklyn, two weeks ago. It wasn't quite the same as an indoor show in a club, drowning in the haze machine, but it was a taste of normal that I appreciated immensely. I'm hoping that I'll be on a dance floor, spinning around to dark synthesizer music before September. I do have a ticket for a show in September as well, seeing The Residents—the only ticket from 2020 I bought that didn't just get straight up cancelled.
posted by SansPoint at 10:10 AM on May 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by SansPoint at 10:10 AM on May 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
I will definitely be not "going back to normal," and I don't even know if I'm able to grieve without having some kind of language to address my anger at the large number of people, even here in Canada, who decided to be huge assholes and just DO THE STUPIDEST FUCKING THINGS POSSIBLE.
They finally arrested that Chris Saccoccia guy (mainly for fighting with the cops), but too little, too late.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 10:22 AM on May 24, 2021 [15 favorites]
They finally arrested that Chris Saccoccia guy (mainly for fighting with the cops), but too little, too late.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 10:22 AM on May 24, 2021 [15 favorites]
I don't think things will ever get back to normal. Yeah eventually we can eat in restaurants. Hold hands. Whatever. But between covid and the previous administration, the mask is off in a way it hadn't been before. I've written on the blue before about how the isolation of poverty and the isolation of pandemic were nearly identical for me, and that I've been experiencing the former for a lot longer, but even then I can acutely feel the effects of global catastrophe taking hold.
My father died last month, a few days before my birthday. I haven't grieved and I don't know how to. It was traumatic. He was in stable health but with several chronic illnesses, then the stress of the pandemic destroyed his mental health. He lost the capacity to take care of himself, and wouldn't accept help. His landlord, we found out, was harassing him and threatening eviction daily, despite the moratorium. We found notes about his struggle, he talked about how it was getting harder and harder to leave the house. Fear of the pandemic and fear that the landlord would come and steal all of his possessions if he left the premises meant his last week was hell. He hadn't eaten that week, he had no ostomy supplies, he was having constant panic attacks which he interpreted as heart attacks and was taking copious amounts of nitroglycerin for. His COPD worsened and he was sleeping 15 hours a day because of it, and probably because of his depression. His house was absolutely littered with small, empty nitro bottles, but several months of all of his other prescriptions were sitting around in CVS bags. We intervened after finally getting in touch with him, called an ambulance whose medics had to practically take him by force, and he coded the next day in the hospital. He was put on a ventilator, but couldn't keep his blood pressure up, probably from the years of nitro abuse. It took about 20-22 hours for him to finally pass after taking him off the ventilator, and I stayed at his bedside the entire time.
His death was a combination of poverty, capitalism, the pandemic, and the already-failing-and-yet-still-worsening healthcare system and our society's inability to take care of people with chronic illness or the elderly. Some days I get so mad and want to take it out on the callous and greedy landlord, some days I want to find the doctor and pharmacist that were supplying him with insane amounts of nitroglycerin and sue them into the ground, some days I want to throw a Molotov cocktail at the whole system.
Even though he didn't die from covid, I can't separate the instances. This is what society thinks of people. This is what our system is designed for. The pandemic and my dad's death solidified in me that most of my fellow citizens are disposable to those in power. I was in school prior to last March, but the stress of the trump administration, and the pandemic (I work non-medically in health care), etc. meant I failed one of my classes and decided I really needed to take a break for my own sake. I feel no closer to being able to return. There's no upward mobility for me. The reality of dying decades younger than most Americans, trampled by poverty and an uncaring country are a likely outcome for me, and millions. It's just something I will have to reckon with. There's no coming back from that.
posted by FirstMateKate at 10:34 AM on May 24, 2021 [70 favorites]
My father died last month, a few days before my birthday. I haven't grieved and I don't know how to. It was traumatic. He was in stable health but with several chronic illnesses, then the stress of the pandemic destroyed his mental health. He lost the capacity to take care of himself, and wouldn't accept help. His landlord, we found out, was harassing him and threatening eviction daily, despite the moratorium. We found notes about his struggle, he talked about how it was getting harder and harder to leave the house. Fear of the pandemic and fear that the landlord would come and steal all of his possessions if he left the premises meant his last week was hell. He hadn't eaten that week, he had no ostomy supplies, he was having constant panic attacks which he interpreted as heart attacks and was taking copious amounts of nitroglycerin for. His COPD worsened and he was sleeping 15 hours a day because of it, and probably because of his depression. His house was absolutely littered with small, empty nitro bottles, but several months of all of his other prescriptions were sitting around in CVS bags. We intervened after finally getting in touch with him, called an ambulance whose medics had to practically take him by force, and he coded the next day in the hospital. He was put on a ventilator, but couldn't keep his blood pressure up, probably from the years of nitro abuse. It took about 20-22 hours for him to finally pass after taking him off the ventilator, and I stayed at his bedside the entire time.
His death was a combination of poverty, capitalism, the pandemic, and the already-failing-and-yet-still-worsening healthcare system and our society's inability to take care of people with chronic illness or the elderly. Some days I get so mad and want to take it out on the callous and greedy landlord, some days I want to find the doctor and pharmacist that were supplying him with insane amounts of nitroglycerin and sue them into the ground, some days I want to throw a Molotov cocktail at the whole system.
Even though he didn't die from covid, I can't separate the instances. This is what society thinks of people. This is what our system is designed for. The pandemic and my dad's death solidified in me that most of my fellow citizens are disposable to those in power. I was in school prior to last March, but the stress of the trump administration, and the pandemic (I work non-medically in health care), etc. meant I failed one of my classes and decided I really needed to take a break for my own sake. I feel no closer to being able to return. There's no upward mobility for me. The reality of dying decades younger than most Americans, trampled by poverty and an uncaring country are a likely outcome for me, and millions. It's just something I will have to reckon with. There's no coming back from that.
posted by FirstMateKate at 10:34 AM on May 24, 2021 [70 favorites]
Basically anything at all is safer than what I’ve been doing for the last 15 months as a nurse, so I’m having no trouble going back into the parts of the world from which I sequestered myself. There is no place I can go that will be more dangerous than standing inches from a patient’s airway removing a stylet from an endotracheal tube during intubation while wearing a week-old N95.
I think my pandemic trauma, my realization that I was in genuine danger for a good chunk of the last 15 months, is manifesting in my struggle to have the empathy I ought to have for many of my friends and neighbors as they navigate their re-entry.
I usually have a surfeit of empathy—I’d be a shitty nurse without it—but it’s failing me now. I don’t know how to feel empathy for how disconcerting it is to walk into a Target when I walked into a hospital bursting at the seams with covid patients every day. How do I empathize with how anxiety-provoking they find it to hug other (fully vaccinated!) people when there was no way to be 6’ away from my patient or my coworkers long before a vaccine was available? How can I nod with understanding about how worried they are about eating in a restaurant when I ate, and still eat, in the same crowded break room with the same number of people while covid rampaged through the hospital?
I understand rationally that re-entry is hard for everyone in lots of different ways. Everyone has suffered, and no one ever has to earn their right to feel their feelings. It’s not a contest.
But all I feel, truly feel, is frustration and impatience that their fear has no basis in their current reality as fully vaccinated people living in a state with the lowest incidence of covid infection in the country.
I feel dismissive, and I am so ashamed of myself.
posted by jesourie at 11:15 AM on May 24, 2021 [100 favorites]
I think my pandemic trauma, my realization that I was in genuine danger for a good chunk of the last 15 months, is manifesting in my struggle to have the empathy I ought to have for many of my friends and neighbors as they navigate their re-entry.
I usually have a surfeit of empathy—I’d be a shitty nurse without it—but it’s failing me now. I don’t know how to feel empathy for how disconcerting it is to walk into a Target when I walked into a hospital bursting at the seams with covid patients every day. How do I empathize with how anxiety-provoking they find it to hug other (fully vaccinated!) people when there was no way to be 6’ away from my patient or my coworkers long before a vaccine was available? How can I nod with understanding about how worried they are about eating in a restaurant when I ate, and still eat, in the same crowded break room with the same number of people while covid rampaged through the hospital?
I understand rationally that re-entry is hard for everyone in lots of different ways. Everyone has suffered, and no one ever has to earn their right to feel their feelings. It’s not a contest.
But all I feel, truly feel, is frustration and impatience that their fear has no basis in their current reality as fully vaccinated people living in a state with the lowest incidence of covid infection in the country.
I feel dismissive, and I am so ashamed of myself.
posted by jesourie at 11:15 AM on May 24, 2021 [100 favorites]
Excellent article. I'm fully vaccinated, and I haven't changed my lifestyle too much at once...just baby steps. The other weekend I went to a wedding shower - the first actual gathering that I've been to since the pandemic started, and yesterday I ate in a restaurant for the first time since the pandemic. (Met up with a couple former coworkers.) The big surprise was that I wasn't super uncomfortable doing those things like I thought I would he. It just felt like the good kind of normal.
I'm still wearing masks inside stores and things, though, and probably will for a while. Goes back to the lack of trust mentioned. Especially since you've got all the people who aren't vaccinated and boast about refusing to wear masks, or making fake vaccination cards.
posted by SisterHavana at 11:32 AM on May 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
I'm still wearing masks inside stores and things, though, and probably will for a while. Goes back to the lack of trust mentioned. Especially since you've got all the people who aren't vaccinated and boast about refusing to wear masks, or making fake vaccination cards.
posted by SisterHavana at 11:32 AM on May 24, 2021 [2 favorites]
jesourie, you should feel like that. If I were you I definitely would. I went agoraphobic within oh, 24 hours of being sent home because I no longer HAD to keep being out in the world exposing myself to risk every day and I went complete whackadoodle about it. I was told the world is so scary I shouldn't be out in it at all, and I didn't go out, and there I went down the nutterpants trail. The people who have had to keep living their usual daily lives in public except with masks on HAD to brave the world and exposure daily and weren't as privileged as my spoiled indoor ass was. Really, how could you emphasize with that when you didn't experience it or feel it? When you had to be in danger daily, someone like me is completely ridiculous to someone like you. And should be!
I think all you can best do is either keep your mouth shut around people like myself, or gently point out "I'm a nurse, I had to be danger every day, so my experience was different," and then I at least would feel rightly shamed about whining about going to Target and leave you be. Just a thought.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:52 AM on May 24, 2021 [12 favorites]
I think all you can best do is either keep your mouth shut around people like myself, or gently point out "I'm a nurse, I had to be danger every day, so my experience was different," and then I at least would feel rightly shamed about whining about going to Target and leave you be. Just a thought.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:52 AM on May 24, 2021 [12 favorites]
I'm so glad I found this thread. I had two wonderful Zoom sessions yesterday - one with the collective cousins, one with my siblings - and afterwards felt so awful. I went to bed with a dead heart full of hate. Reading all of your expressions has helped me sort out why. I thank everyone for putting it into words.
The worst part of my current state is the nagging voice in my head that I had it good compared to most people, and should just buck up and get out there. I'll try to be nicer to myself.
posted by Sweet Dee Kat at 11:54 AM on May 24, 2021 [7 favorites]
The worst part of my current state is the nagging voice in my head that I had it good compared to most people, and should just buck up and get out there. I'll try to be nicer to myself.
posted by Sweet Dee Kat at 11:54 AM on May 24, 2021 [7 favorites]
I keep feeling I shouldn't be reading this discussion, because I had a VERY different pandemic than most people. Like, as near as I can tell I'm not having the super strong reaction about the CDC mask thing because while everyone else was experiencing the issue of masking as this huge cultural issue, I was trying not to think about the fact that reading subtitles was more than my brain could handle, or that I was physically incapable of actually paying attention to music. I just didn't have the energy to feel as devastated as I those realizations would make me. So, hey I don't have this ingrained instinct that no-mask = anti-science to overcome.
On the other hand, I have to deal with all the fall out of essentially missing a year of my life because of all the health issues that came with long haul COVID. I have to deal with the fact that even though I'm recovering, it's so slow as to not be noticeable. I get the nagging fear that my life will be much shorter and less healthy. I get the guilt for all the times I wasn't able to be there for my friends and family because I just didn't have it in me. I sometimes just sit here and try not to cry because I'm having to retrain myself how to listen critically to jazz. I have days where every time I take a breath, I'm reminded that my body is fundamentally broken.
And then I come in to conversations like this, where it reads like there are these universal ways of suffering. And I just feel so damn broken and alone; I'm not even able be traumatized right anymore. And like, I KNOW better than to expect people who haven't had the same experience as me to feel like I do. I'm part of a support group of long-haulers because I need people like me to commiserate with.
I don't begrudge anyone here their need to share their own experiences, please don't take this as me doing anything other than talking about how I feel.
I don't know what my point is, other than just to say, if you can't relate to the stuff people are saying here, you're not wrong. If you can eat at a restaurant or go to bar, that doesn't mean you're in denial. Don't feel guilty, don't feel like the way you're coping is wrong, or like you don't deserve to heal. Just, take care of yourself and be as generous and patient with yourself and others as you can. We're all hurting.
posted by Gygesringtone at 11:55 AM on May 24, 2021 [43 favorites]
On the other hand, I have to deal with all the fall out of essentially missing a year of my life because of all the health issues that came with long haul COVID. I have to deal with the fact that even though I'm recovering, it's so slow as to not be noticeable. I get the nagging fear that my life will be much shorter and less healthy. I get the guilt for all the times I wasn't able to be there for my friends and family because I just didn't have it in me. I sometimes just sit here and try not to cry because I'm having to retrain myself how to listen critically to jazz. I have days where every time I take a breath, I'm reminded that my body is fundamentally broken.
And then I come in to conversations like this, where it reads like there are these universal ways of suffering. And I just feel so damn broken and alone; I'm not even able be traumatized right anymore. And like, I KNOW better than to expect people who haven't had the same experience as me to feel like I do. I'm part of a support group of long-haulers because I need people like me to commiserate with.
I don't begrudge anyone here their need to share their own experiences, please don't take this as me doing anything other than talking about how I feel.
I don't know what my point is, other than just to say, if you can't relate to the stuff people are saying here, you're not wrong. If you can eat at a restaurant or go to bar, that doesn't mean you're in denial. Don't feel guilty, don't feel like the way you're coping is wrong, or like you don't deserve to heal. Just, take care of yourself and be as generous and patient with yourself and others as you can. We're all hurting.
posted by Gygesringtone at 11:55 AM on May 24, 2021 [43 favorites]
Thanks for posting this. While I've had the privilege of WFH for the last 14 months (and likely will continue to do so at least partially moving forward) and neither my husband nor I have lost our jobs, I'm finding myself so angry and confused. The pandemic was good to us financially as I saved about $1000/month in commuting fees and we stopped going anywhere and spending money on anything except essentials. But we let go of some friends who revealed themselves to be not the kind of people we thought they were; we've basically been erased by my husband's whole family, whom he was close to, because they thought we were selfish and uncaring because we have remained isolated. I don't trust anything from the federal government after 4 years of clowning and criming. We are slowly dipping our toes back in the water, but I can't see going to a restaurant any time in the near future or not wearing a mask in public. I don't trust anyone, even my close friends. I feel ridiculous for wanting proof of their vaccination but then at the same time one of them almost gave me covid when I went to help her in an emergency and my gut tells me she knew she was positive when I went to help her and not the three days later that she said she got a positive test.
I don't want to go back to "normal." This pandemic revealed every ugly part of America and its bowing to the billionaire class. Everything from emergency services to food to education to access to health care to religion to _insert here_ was driven by the need to keep the economy going while half a million of us died at the altar of capitalism. How does one move on from that.
posted by archimago at 1:24 PM on May 24, 2021 [26 favorites]
I don't want to go back to "normal." This pandemic revealed every ugly part of America and its bowing to the billionaire class. Everything from emergency services to food to education to access to health care to religion to _insert here_ was driven by the need to keep the economy going while half a million of us died at the altar of capitalism. How does one move on from that.
posted by archimago at 1:24 PM on May 24, 2021 [26 favorites]
I kind of can't imagine "normal" now. Going physically to the office, 5 days a week? Dining in restaurants? Not wearing masks when around other people? All those things seem very strange to me, and I honestly don't know if I even want them.
I do want to go to the zoo once in a while and take trips to see family on holidays again, but those things were never "normal" to begin with, they were always outside the routine.
posted by Foosnark at 1:51 PM on May 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
I do want to go to the zoo once in a while and take trips to see family on holidays again, but those things were never "normal" to begin with, they were always outside the routine.
posted by Foosnark at 1:51 PM on May 24, 2021 [1 favorite]
Honestly, I'm proud of how I handled myself through this hell year+. My burdens weren't especially heavy compared to many, but based on what I did have to face, I felt like my coping skills were better than I could have imagined and I'm proud, surprised, and delighted to have gotten myself to where I am now.
Between my job and my living situation and my (pretty small potatoes) activism, I was forced to be out and about and around people literally every single day, so re-entry hasn't been hard. Or even that different. I'm just wearing my mask less.
My friends are going slowly, so I haven't seen them in person yet. For them, every time they have set foot outside their houses since March 2020, it has been by choice. Every time they have talked to a person face-to-face, it has been by choice -- or it has been to someone inside their bubble. Sometimes it has been by choice, for me, but much more often it has been by necessity. That makes their perspective very different from mine, both in March 2020 and now.
It's weird to have lived a much riskier lifestyle than they did. It just happened that being a single, urban, dog-owner with a Republican boss meant I had to be out in the city and in a fully staffed office every single day, and them being married suburban dog owners with yards and bosses who complied with lock down orders mean they never had to and still don't. Plus, I went to protests and was an election official and yes, dated. Those were human needs, for me, even though they were things that didn't literally put food in my belly or a roof over my head. Anyway, it's like we were playing musical chairs and when the music stopped, they all got a chair and I didn't. And now the music is starting back up, and it's a big adjustment for them, but it isn't especially for me. When I was really scared, which was for a long time, I was jealous of them. But now that I'm vaccinated, that fear and jealousy isn't visceral anymore.
Still, I do feel some trepidation about life going back to "normal." It feels like I've re-calibrated, things turned out pretty good, and I don't want to have to re-calibrate AGAIN. I know life is change, and it's just something that must be continually adjusted to, but I do want a minute or two in my comfort zone.
posted by nowadays at 1:51 PM on May 24, 2021 [5 favorites]
Between my job and my living situation and my (pretty small potatoes) activism, I was forced to be out and about and around people literally every single day, so re-entry hasn't been hard. Or even that different. I'm just wearing my mask less.
My friends are going slowly, so I haven't seen them in person yet. For them, every time they have set foot outside their houses since March 2020, it has been by choice. Every time they have talked to a person face-to-face, it has been by choice -- or it has been to someone inside their bubble. Sometimes it has been by choice, for me, but much more often it has been by necessity. That makes their perspective very different from mine, both in March 2020 and now.
It's weird to have lived a much riskier lifestyle than they did. It just happened that being a single, urban, dog-owner with a Republican boss meant I had to be out in the city and in a fully staffed office every single day, and them being married suburban dog owners with yards and bosses who complied with lock down orders mean they never had to and still don't. Plus, I went to protests and was an election official and yes, dated. Those were human needs, for me, even though they were things that didn't literally put food in my belly or a roof over my head. Anyway, it's like we were playing musical chairs and when the music stopped, they all got a chair and I didn't. And now the music is starting back up, and it's a big adjustment for them, but it isn't especially for me. When I was really scared, which was for a long time, I was jealous of them. But now that I'm vaccinated, that fear and jealousy isn't visceral anymore.
Still, I do feel some trepidation about life going back to "normal." It feels like I've re-calibrated, things turned out pretty good, and I don't want to have to re-calibrate AGAIN. I know life is change, and it's just something that must be continually adjusted to, but I do want a minute or two in my comfort zone.
posted by nowadays at 1:51 PM on May 24, 2021 [5 favorites]
I feel dismissive, and I am so ashamed of myself.
I really hope you can find a way to let go of that shame. It's completely reasonable to feel the way you do! Heck I feel the same way often and I wasn't even a frontline worker. I know it's unsympathetic, but it still bubbles up from time to time.
Like, some people just had to be so fucking superhumanly brave and resolute and dedicated for SO FUCKING LONG, y'all, and so many people do not get to stop anytime soon either. So it feels like the least I can do is get on a motherfucking bus once in a while and buy my own yogurt instead of letting someone else take the risk.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 2:24 PM on May 24, 2021 [6 favorites]
I really hope you can find a way to let go of that shame. It's completely reasonable to feel the way you do! Heck I feel the same way often and I wasn't even a frontline worker. I know it's unsympathetic, but it still bubbles up from time to time.
Like, some people just had to be so fucking superhumanly brave and resolute and dedicated for SO FUCKING LONG, y'all, and so many people do not get to stop anytime soon either. So it feels like the least I can do is get on a motherfucking bus once in a while and buy my own yogurt instead of letting someone else take the risk.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 2:24 PM on May 24, 2021 [6 favorites]
Abandoned by family shortly before the pandemic entered the country where i am at. When it came this city was hit first. People dying all in the neighborhood, sirens night and day, everyone else in the country all like "well at least it isn't here yet". But it was.
got to live inside cause old friends gave me shelter, let me live in a room in their apt. Best not be seen by landlord, not suposta be here. Tried to get loan from my CU for emergency housing, ignored. Trying to reconnect with the fam, understand what happened, froze out.
Then the smoke came. Got sick, hacking every day. Not covid though, just constant fear.
So now things are opening up. I have to go from here, but where. Saved up some money but not enough to afford an apt anywhere in province. Got no car for to move. borrowt a little yardpatch i could go clear and camp in for a minute but i know the smoke is coming again.
most my friends are not. my family is not. who is what? why are we like this
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 3:13 PM on May 24, 2021 [6 favorites]
got to live inside cause old friends gave me shelter, let me live in a room in their apt. Best not be seen by landlord, not suposta be here. Tried to get loan from my CU for emergency housing, ignored. Trying to reconnect with the fam, understand what happened, froze out.
Then the smoke came. Got sick, hacking every day. Not covid though, just constant fear.
So now things are opening up. I have to go from here, but where. Saved up some money but not enough to afford an apt anywhere in province. Got no car for to move. borrowt a little yardpatch i could go clear and camp in for a minute but i know the smoke is coming again.
most my friends are not. my family is not. who is what? why are we like this
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 3:13 PM on May 24, 2021 [6 favorites]
I'm on a meeting call right now and I'm the only person still remote. I really don't know how I feel.
Besides bad and scared all the time about a lot of things. After every social interaction I spend an entire day or two endlessly just thinking to myself I suck, I should die and I want out. I don't know why extremely good social interactions are bringing this on. It's like my normal social anxiety times a thousand million.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 3:33 PM on May 24, 2021 [5 favorites]
Besides bad and scared all the time about a lot of things. After every social interaction I spend an entire day or two endlessly just thinking to myself I suck, I should die and I want out. I don't know why extremely good social interactions are bringing this on. It's like my normal social anxiety times a thousand million.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 3:33 PM on May 24, 2021 [5 favorites]
I'm the sort of person who hunkers down during crises, makes it through thanks to peasant stoicism, and then cracks up when the crisis is past. I expect a breakdown Real...Soon...Now.
posted by praemunire at 3:42 PM on May 24, 2021 [12 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 3:42 PM on May 24, 2021 [12 favorites]
But people also become sensitized to further traumas in their own life. Silver has repeatedly found this pattern among people who experience successive disasters, such as 9/11, Hurricane Sandy, and the Boston Marathon bombings. Many didn’t habituate: Each new blow brought more stress, not less. “Around the one-year anniversary of COVID, a number of journalists asked me, ‘It’s been a year; why aren’t we adjusted to this?’” Silver told me. “I found that question very unusual.”
Yeah, I feel that. Here's my Twitter-thread diary of all the things that made me cry since last August, including this thread!
posted by limeonaire at 3:55 PM on May 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
Yeah, I feel that. Here's my Twitter-thread diary of all the things that made me cry since last August, including this thread!
posted by limeonaire at 3:55 PM on May 24, 2021 [3 favorites]
Hey, y'all, I read the whole thread and I didn't see a single word that made me think less of any one of you. Not one word.
OnTheLastCastle, I hear you on the ugly thoughts. Also had those on and off, felt it again as recently as a few days ago (and I've been fully vaxed for a couple weeks now). For me, as a recently-divorced childfree middle-aged woman whose friends all live in the computer... it's a bleak awareness that hardly anyone gives much of a damn about me, and of those few who do, none is local enough to lend a hand should I need one.
I'm awfully glad for my cats. I don't like to think about what my thought processes would be without them depending on me and being fond of me in their feline way.
posted by humbug at 4:04 PM on May 24, 2021 [8 favorites]
OnTheLastCastle, I hear you on the ugly thoughts. Also had those on and off, felt it again as recently as a few days ago (and I've been fully vaxed for a couple weeks now). For me, as a recently-divorced childfree middle-aged woman whose friends all live in the computer... it's a bleak awareness that hardly anyone gives much of a damn about me, and of those few who do, none is local enough to lend a hand should I need one.
I'm awfully glad for my cats. I don't like to think about what my thought processes would be without them depending on me and being fond of me in their feline way.
posted by humbug at 4:04 PM on May 24, 2021 [8 favorites]
And then I come in to conversations like this, where it reads like there are these universal ways of suffering. And I just feel so damn broken and alone; I'm not even able be traumatized right anymore.
Yeah. I have long covid. Mostly I feel numb in these conversations, and oddly dissociative. Less of a person and more a collection of broken parts.
posted by Ballad of Peckham Rye at 4:30 PM on May 24, 2021 [9 favorites]
Yeah. I have long covid. Mostly I feel numb in these conversations, and oddly dissociative. Less of a person and more a collection of broken parts.
posted by Ballad of Peckham Rye at 4:30 PM on May 24, 2021 [9 favorites]
I went back through that Twitter thread and did a current count: I'm up to 7 people I knew in person who've died in the past year (really the last 7 months) and several artists, musicians, and others whose deaths rocked me even though I didn't know them personally. Not all of those people died of the virus, but as others have said, it all feels of a piece to me. As the article alludes to, some communities and populations were hit harder than others by this, on top of being more vulnerable for a number of other reasons. I don't think it's possible to really separate out all of those risk factors, especially because discrimination is a common factor in a lot of them, and if you grew up in or adjacent to those communities or have loved ones across socioeconomic and cultural boundaries, what hurts them ends up hurting you too. Their sorrow is your sorrow, even if your experiences are inevitably different.
Would my old neighbor have been murdered by his daughter's boyfriend while protecting her if things weren't already tense financially or otherwise after the past year? Would my dear friend from high school have experienced the moment of inattention that led to his death in a tragic dialysis accident without the backdrop of multiple deaths in his family from COVID? Would my friend/former colleague who struggled with depression have died if not for all of this? Yeah, my fourth-grade teacher died of complications of a stroke, but could it have been COVID-triggered or the result of reduced activity while avoiding the virus?
She had that stroke, it turns out, literally the day after we saw my mother's swollen leg on a video call and told her to get it checked out. She was diagnosed with blood clots and was just lucky nothing worse happened. She's still on blood thinners.
It's all a lot to take in. I've been out clubbing once a weekend for the past 5 weeks since becoming fully vaccinated (then I pretty much avoid all risks still for the rest of each week), and my body feels like it's starting to recover from the toll the past year took on it, but all these psychic wounds will of course take the time they take.
posted by limeonaire at 4:36 PM on May 24, 2021 [8 favorites]
Would my old neighbor have been murdered by his daughter's boyfriend while protecting her if things weren't already tense financially or otherwise after the past year? Would my dear friend from high school have experienced the moment of inattention that led to his death in a tragic dialysis accident without the backdrop of multiple deaths in his family from COVID? Would my friend/former colleague who struggled with depression have died if not for all of this? Yeah, my fourth-grade teacher died of complications of a stroke, but could it have been COVID-triggered or the result of reduced activity while avoiding the virus?
She had that stroke, it turns out, literally the day after we saw my mother's swollen leg on a video call and told her to get it checked out. She was diagnosed with blood clots and was just lucky nothing worse happened. She's still on blood thinners.
It's all a lot to take in. I've been out clubbing once a weekend for the past 5 weeks since becoming fully vaccinated (then I pretty much avoid all risks still for the rest of each week), and my body feels like it's starting to recover from the toll the past year took on it, but all these psychic wounds will of course take the time they take.
posted by limeonaire at 4:36 PM on May 24, 2021 [8 favorites]
I wonder if part of this is that I just can never trust most people again. I've seen more than their adherence and tolerance for Trump, I've now seen that they will do anything, anything, to preserve no inconvenience to themselves.
Will I ever be able to escape the thought that there is another shoe. It will drop. Will it hurt or kill as many people? Why should I want to live in a world like that even if I have many good things anchoring me?
Not going to hurt myself or anything, but I really don't know if I can belong to anything anymore. How could anyone if they know that this is who "we" truly are, anyway? I also know that there is a spirit somewhere inside me that will rise up and bring as much light as I can places eventually, but it's... hard... to believe right now. So hard.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 4:41 PM on May 24, 2021 [16 favorites]
Will I ever be able to escape the thought that there is another shoe. It will drop. Will it hurt or kill as many people? Why should I want to live in a world like that even if I have many good things anchoring me?
Not going to hurt myself or anything, but I really don't know if I can belong to anything anymore. How could anyone if they know that this is who "we" truly are, anyway? I also know that there is a spirit somewhere inside me that will rise up and bring as much light as I can places eventually, but it's... hard... to believe right now. So hard.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 4:41 PM on May 24, 2021 [16 favorites]
Let me for a second discuss a different effect of the last 14 months.... My wife has a condition that weakens her immune system, she was routinely sick with colds as they passed thru work/friends/locally in the past. Since March 20th of last year we adhered to a fairly strict interpretation of the guidelines and she has not fallen ill once since then.
Just saying, there are little, tiny, itty-bitty silver linings in the madness. (and continued masking)
All that being said we're pulling up stakes & making bolder moves as it suits us - the "why wait" mentality 100% describes us.
posted by djseafood at 4:50 PM on May 24, 2021 [9 favorites]
Just saying, there are little, tiny, itty-bitty silver linings in the madness. (and continued masking)
All that being said we're pulling up stakes & making bolder moves as it suits us - the "why wait" mentality 100% describes us.
posted by djseafood at 4:50 PM on May 24, 2021 [9 favorites]
My husband spent 11 months Covid nursing. Our family spent those months pretty isolated as a result. We are all pretty fucking traumatized. The things my husband has gone through have left me haunted just from hearing them second hand. He is absolutely not ok. And while he is off the Covid unit now, the people coming through his PCU are so much sicker than in the before times. They are seeing the fallout from a year of medical neglect, which is a whole different type of moral injury than Covid. Even though we've tried to be careful with what we talk about in front of the kids - there was just no way for the horror of the last year to not slip through somewhat. They are well supported, but still under a lot of stress.
We had Covid in early January - fairly mild cases at the time. However, 3 of us in our 4 person household have long term effects. My husband has only regained some of his sense of smell while my oldest child has lingering mixed up taste problems. My child has struggled with avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder even before everything and this is an added complication they don't need. I have lost control of my blood sugar, going from years of a normal a1c to type 2 diabetic ranged numbers (skipping past prediabetes altogether) in the span of 2 months. This is devastating to me, because as a fat lady recovering from years of disordered and restrictive eating, trying to manage blood sugar without triggering a relapse is exhausting. My doctor doesn't know if this is permanent or something post-viral that will improve.
Having had a chronic disease since childhood (Ankylosing Spondylitis) and having watched my father die of my cancer as a child, I have never had magical thinking about health or bodies. I've seen behind the curtain and know there are things that can't be fixed with the right food or vitamins or even medicine and other medical treatments (though it didn't stop me from trying in my own desperate times). Being the main support person for a nurse over the last year has completely ripped that curtain down.
And so many of the people in my life are willfully blind to this reality I live in. They always were, but it didn't really bother me much. It does now. These people who think their immune boosting cordyceps/algae smoothies will protect them from Covid. The ones who kept their vegan restaurant's dining room open through the pandemic, violating cdc guidelines all over the place. Because now I think maybe their beliefs killed a bunch of people.
And now that I'm vaxxed and my weekly goth dancing (masked, low capacity) has started up again I am going out occasionally. (Like limeonaire above, it's my one indoor outing right now.) I am coming into contact with people I have lost all respect for. I've had to face dear friends for the first time since setting some pretty strict conversational boundaries and subsequently had them completely steam roller over said boundaries (in triggering and abelist ways.) Now they are formerly dear friends.
I'm also realizing that the reality of my last year and our family's lived experiences has also placed a barrier between me and the people on the completely opposite end of things. The extremely risk averse friends who are a long way from rejoining the public world, even after being vaccinated. I don't fault anyone from making their own risk analysis and for whatever reason remaining cautious. But some of the people in this category are treating my carefully considered forays into public social life as a betrayal equal to those going out partying maskless at the height of the pandemic.
And after this last year of trauma, isolation, sickness, sacrifice and losing people we know (and love) to Covid and other things, their scorn hurts. After over a year of holding everyone and everything in this house together I just want this one thing. To be in my most healing place, doing my favorite thing amidst the community that has always been my lifeline. And I know that is a selfish want but after living with high exposure risk for nine months and getting Covid, my risk/benefit analysis is coming out in favor of my mental health right now.
posted by Lapin at 8:59 PM on May 24, 2021 [25 favorites]
We had Covid in early January - fairly mild cases at the time. However, 3 of us in our 4 person household have long term effects. My husband has only regained some of his sense of smell while my oldest child has lingering mixed up taste problems. My child has struggled with avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder even before everything and this is an added complication they don't need. I have lost control of my blood sugar, going from years of a normal a1c to type 2 diabetic ranged numbers (skipping past prediabetes altogether) in the span of 2 months. This is devastating to me, because as a fat lady recovering from years of disordered and restrictive eating, trying to manage blood sugar without triggering a relapse is exhausting. My doctor doesn't know if this is permanent or something post-viral that will improve.
Having had a chronic disease since childhood (Ankylosing Spondylitis) and having watched my father die of my cancer as a child, I have never had magical thinking about health or bodies. I've seen behind the curtain and know there are things that can't be fixed with the right food or vitamins or even medicine and other medical treatments (though it didn't stop me from trying in my own desperate times). Being the main support person for a nurse over the last year has completely ripped that curtain down.
And so many of the people in my life are willfully blind to this reality I live in. They always were, but it didn't really bother me much. It does now. These people who think their immune boosting cordyceps/algae smoothies will protect them from Covid. The ones who kept their vegan restaurant's dining room open through the pandemic, violating cdc guidelines all over the place. Because now I think maybe their beliefs killed a bunch of people.
And now that I'm vaxxed and my weekly goth dancing (masked, low capacity) has started up again I am going out occasionally. (Like limeonaire above, it's my one indoor outing right now.) I am coming into contact with people I have lost all respect for. I've had to face dear friends for the first time since setting some pretty strict conversational boundaries and subsequently had them completely steam roller over said boundaries (in triggering and abelist ways.) Now they are formerly dear friends.
I'm also realizing that the reality of my last year and our family's lived experiences has also placed a barrier between me and the people on the completely opposite end of things. The extremely risk averse friends who are a long way from rejoining the public world, even after being vaccinated. I don't fault anyone from making their own risk analysis and for whatever reason remaining cautious. But some of the people in this category are treating my carefully considered forays into public social life as a betrayal equal to those going out partying maskless at the height of the pandemic.
And after this last year of trauma, isolation, sickness, sacrifice and losing people we know (and love) to Covid and other things, their scorn hurts. After over a year of holding everyone and everything in this house together I just want this one thing. To be in my most healing place, doing my favorite thing amidst the community that has always been my lifeline. And I know that is a selfish want but after living with high exposure risk for nine months and getting Covid, my risk/benefit analysis is coming out in favor of my mental health right now.
posted by Lapin at 8:59 PM on May 24, 2021 [25 favorites]
Reading this is like a glimpse into a potential future. We're heading into winter here in South Africa and our third wave has already started. We only started vaccinating about a week ago and I don't anticipate getting my shot until maybe next year?
The good news is that the two people I'm most worried about might be vaccinated fairly soon, my father, who is in his 80s, and my husband, who is a high school teacher and has to work in classrooms with pretty much no social distancing.
Right now, despite the climbing numbers, lockdown restrictions are light. I see people sharing tables at restaurants every day, people hugging, people playing rugby.
It creates a very real cognitive dissonance for me when the closest I've been to touching my father is kneeling down to fold up his trouser cuffs the other day. Outside. Masked.
I'm hoping that he might get vaccinated soon and then I can drive with him in a car, take him to the library maybe.
The pandemic coincided / sparked my own mental health crisis. For a while I was so anxious that I could not leave the house. I learned that the best way of dealing with anxiety is to face that fear and these days I'm able to do everything I have to do, although it's still a constant struggle keeping myself from spinning into a spiral.
In some ways the pandemic has forced me to deal with problems in myself that I have been avoiding. I'm proud of that. But I do find myself grieving for all the pain and loss and loneliness that so many other people have had to endure.
Once we reach the other shore (if we ever do) I don't anticipate much of a feeling of relief. But it will be nice to be able to be with my friends again.
posted by Zumbador at 9:08 PM on May 24, 2021 [14 favorites]
The good news is that the two people I'm most worried about might be vaccinated fairly soon, my father, who is in his 80s, and my husband, who is a high school teacher and has to work in classrooms with pretty much no social distancing.
Right now, despite the climbing numbers, lockdown restrictions are light. I see people sharing tables at restaurants every day, people hugging, people playing rugby.
It creates a very real cognitive dissonance for me when the closest I've been to touching my father is kneeling down to fold up his trouser cuffs the other day. Outside. Masked.
I'm hoping that he might get vaccinated soon and then I can drive with him in a car, take him to the library maybe.
The pandemic coincided / sparked my own mental health crisis. For a while I was so anxious that I could not leave the house. I learned that the best way of dealing with anxiety is to face that fear and these days I'm able to do everything I have to do, although it's still a constant struggle keeping myself from spinning into a spiral.
In some ways the pandemic has forced me to deal with problems in myself that I have been avoiding. I'm proud of that. But I do find myself grieving for all the pain and loss and loneliness that so many other people have had to endure.
Once we reach the other shore (if we ever do) I don't anticipate much of a feeling of relief. But it will be nice to be able to be with my friends again.
posted by Zumbador at 9:08 PM on May 24, 2021 [14 favorites]
For those who have felt isolation, or balancing concepts of isolation, if anyone remembers the piece "Into the Wild," a striking quote by Christopher McCandless has been a constant presence over the past year.
"Happiness only real when shared."
posted by firstdaffodils at 10:01 PM on May 24, 2021 [7 favorites]
"Happiness only real when shared."
posted by firstdaffodils at 10:01 PM on May 24, 2021 [7 favorites]
This weekend, as a fully vaxxed, fully immune person, I got my first two hugs in over 440 days. Being alone during a pandemic sucks. Being with the wrong person during a pandemic (as several people I know were) is infinitely worse.
I don't know what my new normal will look like. I'm looking forward to seeing friends unmasked, to libraries reopening, to going to the gym, unmasked (probably well after they tell us it's safe). I'm experiencing strong emotional surges, which I have dubbed "thawing." But I'm taking it step by extremely cautious step.
posted by dancing_angel at 10:46 PM on May 24, 2021 [8 favorites]
I don't know what my new normal will look like. I'm looking forward to seeing friends unmasked, to libraries reopening, to going to the gym, unmasked (probably well after they tell us it's safe). I'm experiencing strong emotional surges, which I have dubbed "thawing." But I'm taking it step by extremely cautious step.
posted by dancing_angel at 10:46 PM on May 24, 2021 [8 favorites]
Honestly can't separate the COVID trauma from the Trump trauma from the election trauma from the insurrection trauma from my wife's bike accident trauma from my own stress-induced health problems trauma, etc. Started taking some meds to try to exit this hellish hypervigilant state I've been in for so long now and even the temporary relief has been, I think, nothing short of a miracle. But I still can't muster much optimism for the future.
posted by Dokterrock at 10:47 PM on May 24, 2021 [18 favorites]
posted by Dokterrock at 10:47 PM on May 24, 2021 [18 favorites]
A small editorial note, the FPP doesn't mention covid, I had to click through to find out what it was about. Try mentioning the subject of the post in the post.
I'm jealous of anyone who didn't immediately know what this FPP was about without a mention of COVID-19. I doubt that very many people missed it.
posted by octothorpe at 5:45 AM on May 25, 2021 [5 favorites]
I'm jealous of anyone who didn't immediately know what this FPP was about without a mention of COVID-19. I doubt that very many people missed it.
posted by octothorpe at 5:45 AM on May 25, 2021 [5 favorites]
I'm jealous of anyone who didn't immediately know what this FPP was about without a mention of COVID-19.
Lots of us have experienced non-Covid trauma. Jesus, I wish trauma and one year only brought a single event to mind.
Because I’ve experienced multiple traumas, I know that I’ve done okay over-functioning right now (driven in part by demands on workers and women), and if I’m not careful, a year or two down the line I’ll be burning out, sick, and hyper reactive. But right now it’s too early to know the exact form both healing and aftereffects will take.
I do know that for me, what I want to be a part of is a world that learns and grows. We have seen more extremes lately - the abyss of denial and callousness; the heights of communities and individuals coming together. It’s exhausting me some days but some days...I have hope. One step at a time.
Hugs to all.
posted by warriorqueen at 6:03 AM on May 25, 2021 [5 favorites]
Lots of us have experienced non-Covid trauma. Jesus, I wish trauma and one year only brought a single event to mind.
Because I’ve experienced multiple traumas, I know that I’ve done okay over-functioning right now (driven in part by demands on workers and women), and if I’m not careful, a year or two down the line I’ll be burning out, sick, and hyper reactive. But right now it’s too early to know the exact form both healing and aftereffects will take.
I do know that for me, what I want to be a part of is a world that learns and grows. We have seen more extremes lately - the abyss of denial and callousness; the heights of communities and individuals coming together. It’s exhausting me some days but some days...I have hope. One step at a time.
Hugs to all.
posted by warriorqueen at 6:03 AM on May 25, 2021 [5 favorites]
I logged in so I could comment on all this, and because I wanted to reply to a couple of people (mostly expressing sympathy towards people with long covid who felt somehow 'invalid' because their experience of the epidemic was different from many other people's, as they suffer from disabilities which I hope might be temporary, but I suppose might be permanent.)
I logged in to comment; yet I really don't know what to say, or how to say it. I have learned so much more about evil since early 2020 than I wanted to understand. I guess part of the playbook of evil is to try to make itself as large as it can, and try to make us feel overwhelmed.
If there is much truth in some religions, what will come of some of the people who have worked so hard to encourage our society to make the choices that people would make if they were full of hatred and evil? Many of them will ask God for forgiveness, and will feel sure that they have it. When they die, they won't just go to regular heaven, they will be taken to a special VIP section, roped off and gated so the other people can't get in.
They will be left there with each other, with no one else to buffer them or save them, and the place will become the place that they make it.
Slowly, then faster, it will sink towards the depths far below.
The inhabitants will keep telling themselves for as long as they can, they are just better than other people.
(Maybe a few who didn't feel the self-entitlement and pride to think they don't really deserve to be treated as people who did something terribly wrong, will get to walk a harder but ultimately less horrible path?)
Of course, this might be a mere metaphor. But it feels better than trying to more directly express how I really feel about it all, and trying to sort through some of what the last year and a half have left me with.
One small sample: the January 6th attack on the functioning of constiutionally democratic government in the United States didn't even shock me: it just fed my already existing sense of disgust. In a fair country and just world, so many people would have to go through rehabilitation processes before they were allowed to touch or lift or display an American flag ever again. Not so much for happening to be 'pro-Trump,' but more for their choice to act the way someone would act who had consciously decided to ally with an anti-human virus and try to destroy society's health care systems by trying to to overload them with more victims than they could possibly handle, and try to fill the air with the smoke of burning bodies as the treatable died, and to kill other people's common decency under the attacks of the psychopathic and their followers both evil and clueless.
I want useful information about how in the aftermath of the Nazis' holocaust, some Jews managed to rebuild their psyches and preserve their souls. And how they dealt with the self-disguising and escape of some of the Nazi leaders.
I am painfully aware that some of those Jews never really 'got over it.'
I guess I should be making an 'Ask Mefi' post, not a comment.
posted by cattypist at 11:15 AM on May 25, 2021 [9 favorites]
I logged in to comment; yet I really don't know what to say, or how to say it. I have learned so much more about evil since early 2020 than I wanted to understand. I guess part of the playbook of evil is to try to make itself as large as it can, and try to make us feel overwhelmed.
If there is much truth in some religions, what will come of some of the people who have worked so hard to encourage our society to make the choices that people would make if they were full of hatred and evil? Many of them will ask God for forgiveness, and will feel sure that they have it. When they die, they won't just go to regular heaven, they will be taken to a special VIP section, roped off and gated so the other people can't get in.
They will be left there with each other, with no one else to buffer them or save them, and the place will become the place that they make it.
Slowly, then faster, it will sink towards the depths far below.
The inhabitants will keep telling themselves for as long as they can, they are just better than other people.
(Maybe a few who didn't feel the self-entitlement and pride to think they don't really deserve to be treated as people who did something terribly wrong, will get to walk a harder but ultimately less horrible path?)
Of course, this might be a mere metaphor. But it feels better than trying to more directly express how I really feel about it all, and trying to sort through some of what the last year and a half have left me with.
One small sample: the January 6th attack on the functioning of constiutionally democratic government in the United States didn't even shock me: it just fed my already existing sense of disgust. In a fair country and just world, so many people would have to go through rehabilitation processes before they were allowed to touch or lift or display an American flag ever again. Not so much for happening to be 'pro-Trump,' but more for their choice to act the way someone would act who had consciously decided to ally with an anti-human virus and try to destroy society's health care systems by trying to to overload them with more victims than they could possibly handle, and try to fill the air with the smoke of burning bodies as the treatable died, and to kill other people's common decency under the attacks of the psychopathic and their followers both evil and clueless.
I want useful information about how in the aftermath of the Nazis' holocaust, some Jews managed to rebuild their psyches and preserve their souls. And how they dealt with the self-disguising and escape of some of the Nazi leaders.
I am painfully aware that some of those Jews never really 'got over it.'
I guess I should be making an 'Ask Mefi' post, not a comment.
posted by cattypist at 11:15 AM on May 25, 2021 [9 favorites]
I'm sorry if that was too heavy, and also sorry if it wasn't heavy enough.
posted by cattypist at 11:16 AM on May 25, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by cattypist at 11:16 AM on May 25, 2021 [2 favorites]
Minor quibble: I am well aware that the Nazis' deliberate destruction of Jews killed six million, not 585,000 or whatever the latest estimated total is [EDIT: within the U.S.]. I am also aware that some of the people whose evil and cluelessness I have been trying to cope with would have killed six million people in the United States alone, if they'd been fully allowed to get away with it.
I guess that's a guesstimated statistic I should try to remember. The difference of 10x or more between what their words and actions could have resulted in if they had been allowed to operate unhampered, and what really happened.
posted by cattypist at 11:29 AM on May 25, 2021
I guess that's a guesstimated statistic I should try to remember. The difference of 10x or more between what their words and actions could have resulted in if they had been allowed to operate unhampered, and what really happened.
posted by cattypist at 11:29 AM on May 25, 2021
I want useful information about how in the aftermath of the Nazis' holocaust, some Jews managed to rebuild their psyches and preserve their souls. And how they dealt with the self-disguising and escape of some of the Nazi leaders.None of them got over it. I don't really believe in getting over things in general: I think that you're the product of everything that ever happens to you, good and bad, and hopefully you manage to make that into something that's functional. My grandparents were hugely functional, but they definitely never got over it. They had terrible survivor's guilt, which they passed on to my father. I never knew my grandfather, but my grandmother was kind of an emotional mess in a lot of ways. (She didn't let my father learn to ride a bike as a kid, because she was convinced he'd fall off and die. She called in a panic any time there was a plane crash literally anywhere in the world, because she immediately thought that our family might have been on that plane in, like, Peru or Thailand.) But fundamentally, they saw the rest of their lives as an act of resistance. Every day that they lived a full and reasonably happy life, they stuck it to the people who wanted to torment and kill them. I don't know if that's helpful in this instance, but it's one way of dealing with things.
I am painfully aware that some of those Jews never really 'got over it.'
I feel like I'm pretty much ok, but I suspect I'm not. I'm having really intense social anxiety, which is making even mundane face-to-face interactions kind of awful. I'm having trouble managing eye contact, which has always been a problem for me, but I think I'm out of practice because I haven't been getting out a lot. I think that in some ways, social distancing has allowed me to avoid some of the things that are challenging for me about normal life, and now I'm having some trouble adjusting to having to do that stuff. But I'm actually dealing better with trauma than I was expecting to. (I don't know if I've got a lot of COVID-related trauma, but I do have a fair amount of trauma related to my mom's non-COVID-related illness and death last year.)
Mostly, I'm pretty angry, and I'm worried that I'll destroy my relationships with all sorts of random people if I let slip how angry I am. And since I'm out of practice with basic social interaction, I'm also out of practice with hiding that I think that your "nice" family members are actually monstrous and potentially dangerous, and you're a moral coward and probably even more dangerous because you think you're one of the good guys. So yeah. We'll see how that goes.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 12:16 PM on May 25, 2021 [16 favorites]
I want useful information about how in the aftermath of the Nazis' holocaust, some Jews managed to rebuild their psyches and preserve their souls. And how they dealt with the self-disguising and escape of some of the Nazi leaders.
Well, I mean, there are some seminal works on this, most notably Man's Search for Meaning. But I would gently say that if you have only two frames of reference, an idealized America and the Holocaust, you're missing a massive chunk of human experience and trauma.
I do believe in human evil. So there's that. Some people commit acts over a lifetime that eventually make them incomprehensible in some way, and often do it using the deep mechanisms of what is supposed to be good but is often about control (religion, government).
For those of us raised in the 70s I think we got the idea that people are good, and given a chance everyone will...be good. But it turns out that it's a lot harder. Some people still have religion as a lens on this; others of us reach for a more secular humanistic approach, etc.
But...it isn't just the Holocaust. You'd be hard pressed to find a year there isn't something worldwide that demonstrates the darkness in the human experience. The hundreds of thousands of children abused daily. Timor. AIDS. North Korea. Myanmar. Rwanda comes to mind because of Romeo Dallaire's Shake Hands with the Devil.
I was sexually and physically and emotionally and spiritually abused as a child, within a religious context, and I was raped as a young woman on campus, and then I did therapy to try to learn the world is not terrible...and then my daughter died a few days after a traumatic birth, due to medical people not doing their jobs within a system that didn't ensure that they did.
I promise you that there is a lot of writing, art, plays, movies, and human expression on good, evil, the lack of a just world, and how to be human within it. An AskMe might be cool.
So like, while I recognize that you're reaching for something you can understand (and that's fine): the rest of us who have known how awful people can be and fail us are right here, and we've been here all along.
I think that one thing that helps me, not with the political actors but with Joe Schmoe Covid Denier...it's important to understand that denial is a trauma response. Minimizing pain, wanting - forcing - willing - things to "be normal" is part of it. I personally try to see that as a kind of...diversity of human experience that maybe helps preserve the human race? Like, some of us will weep and not eat for a week, and some of us will weep and grow food but maybe there's a species-level good in having a few people who just never admit anything happened because somehow they lend us a few roots to regrow from?
I don't know. I'm not them. I'm just sharing how I don't punch them in the face daily. I'm angry, but I also think they are doing the equivalent of shutting down over a date raping them and continuing to date them. Surviving.
However...I'm also really, inexpressibly, angry at right-wing governments the world over and idiot Covid deniers. They should have the tools to do better.
But then I come to...it is my privilege that has not equated policies around disability, access to health care, clean drinking water, as "normal" and Covid responses as "unconscionable." Like, they have told me who they are all along. So...I am trying to turn that into a recommitment to getting these assholes out of power.
posted by warriorqueen at 1:00 PM on May 25, 2021 [16 favorites]
Well, I mean, there are some seminal works on this, most notably Man's Search for Meaning. But I would gently say that if you have only two frames of reference, an idealized America and the Holocaust, you're missing a massive chunk of human experience and trauma.
I do believe in human evil. So there's that. Some people commit acts over a lifetime that eventually make them incomprehensible in some way, and often do it using the deep mechanisms of what is supposed to be good but is often about control (religion, government).
For those of us raised in the 70s I think we got the idea that people are good, and given a chance everyone will...be good. But it turns out that it's a lot harder. Some people still have religion as a lens on this; others of us reach for a more secular humanistic approach, etc.
But...it isn't just the Holocaust. You'd be hard pressed to find a year there isn't something worldwide that demonstrates the darkness in the human experience. The hundreds of thousands of children abused daily. Timor. AIDS. North Korea. Myanmar. Rwanda comes to mind because of Romeo Dallaire's Shake Hands with the Devil.
I was sexually and physically and emotionally and spiritually abused as a child, within a religious context, and I was raped as a young woman on campus, and then I did therapy to try to learn the world is not terrible...and then my daughter died a few days after a traumatic birth, due to medical people not doing their jobs within a system that didn't ensure that they did.
I promise you that there is a lot of writing, art, plays, movies, and human expression on good, evil, the lack of a just world, and how to be human within it. An AskMe might be cool.
So like, while I recognize that you're reaching for something you can understand (and that's fine): the rest of us who have known how awful people can be and fail us are right here, and we've been here all along.
I think that one thing that helps me, not with the political actors but with Joe Schmoe Covid Denier...it's important to understand that denial is a trauma response. Minimizing pain, wanting - forcing - willing - things to "be normal" is part of it. I personally try to see that as a kind of...diversity of human experience that maybe helps preserve the human race? Like, some of us will weep and not eat for a week, and some of us will weep and grow food but maybe there's a species-level good in having a few people who just never admit anything happened because somehow they lend us a few roots to regrow from?
I don't know. I'm not them. I'm just sharing how I don't punch them in the face daily. I'm angry, but I also think they are doing the equivalent of shutting down over a date raping them and continuing to date them. Surviving.
However...I'm also really, inexpressibly, angry at right-wing governments the world over and idiot Covid deniers. They should have the tools to do better.
But then I come to...it is my privilege that has not equated policies around disability, access to health care, clean drinking water, as "normal" and Covid responses as "unconscionable." Like, they have told me who they are all along. So...I am trying to turn that into a recommitment to getting these assholes out of power.
posted by warriorqueen at 1:00 PM on May 25, 2021 [16 favorites]
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Very insightful. Thank you.
"At the height of the winter surge, 132,000 people filled U.S. emergency rooms. Based on evidence from Italy and from past coronavirus epidemics, about a third of those people—and the hundreds of thousands more who were hospitalized before and after that moment—will develop PTSD."
"I don’t feel that we’re doomed,” Silver told me. “I do still believe that we will get through this.” She and other experts I talked with noted that people are resilient, and often more so than they realize. But they also agreed that the rhetoric of individual resilience can often be used to plaster over institutional failures: the shortage of mental-health-care providers, the labyrinthine insurance system, the lack of support from employers, the stigma around seeking care at all, and the societal tendency to bottle grief. “I don’t know anyone who looks to the U.S. as a model for grieving and mourning,” Lipsky told me. “We don’t talk about loss. By and large, it’s all about consumption to help numb you out.”
"She is worried that the understandable societal desire to move past the pandemic will further alienate people who are still dealing with grief or symptoms. “What if someone is truly suffering and reaches out for help six months from now, and is told, ‘What are you talking about? The pandemic was ages ago’?” Peek said."
Similar tendencies are apparent now, as commentators wonder why many Americans are still anxious and risk averse, even as the U.S. begins to wake from its pandemic nightmare. “I think some people believe we pressed ‘pause,’ and we’ll go back to the way things were before, as if we didn’t have all the intervening experiences, as if 2020 didn’t happen, as if getting a vaccine erases your memory,” Gold said.
posted by firstdaffodils at 11:28 PM on May 23, 2021 [19 favorites]