Are We Done Yet?

I think one of the things that cannot be stated enough is the baseline anxiety that has existed for basically every person I know who has taken the pandemic seriously over the last year. I was one of the first people vaccinated because of my job and after I received my second shot, the sense of relief was palpable. If I got sick with Covid, I probably wouldn't die. What marvel and privilege to find myself the recipient of a cutting edge vaccination. I didn't realize how heavy the last twelve months have been. Though I knew that I was statistically unlikely to die from the disease, what if I did? What if my children grow up without a mother because I became a victim of the global pandemic? What if I got Tim sick? What if I got my higher-risk parents sick or spread it, unknowingly, to someone around me? What if the disease lands someone I love on a ventilator and they are unable to be active and do the things they love because recovery is brutal and trying and a 100% recovery is not a guarantee?

Those thoughts have been circling in my mind for so, so long. With my shot, I was able to put that portion of my brain dedicated to fear to sleep a bit. I was able to breathe.

And yet, the anxiety still exists to some extent. Tim came down with a headache and a cough and a runny nose and I have stayed, amazingly, non-symptomatic. I am fine, though I am usually the first person in the house to get sick. And so the world starts spinning again: is it Covid? How ill will he get? My mind naturally goes to the place where I think about parenting these children alone. I cannot run this circus by myself; it is a nearly impossible production which requires two well-adjusted people to orchestrate day in, day out, forevermore, ad infinitum. 

And so that anxiety I thought I could put fully to bed is still very much present. My brothers and their wives haven't been vaccinated. Many of my friends are waiting to become eligible because of their younger age bracket. I don't think I will be able to release a true sigh of relief until every human being who truly wants to receive a shot is eligible, can get an appointment, and is fully protected against the Rona.

The last year has been so very, very brutal from a mental health perspective and I have the sense that we are so, so close to re-establishing some kind of new normal. And yet, we aren't there. The fact that Tim will go for a Covid test tomorrow proves just how not normal life is now. And yet, it was easy to schedule online, which is a far cry from the early days where you had to sell a kidney to get an appointment and most were just guessing whether or not their symptoms were related to the virus or not.

Onward, friends. The toil is not yet over. Be calm, be brave, it'll be okay.