It's Not Over Til It's Over
overthinking at 3am
I am wake at 3am. This isn’t unusual, I’m not very good at sleeping. Rather than just get up for the day as I usually do, I decide to stay in bed, just lie in the dark and think a little. This is rarely a good idea, and today it’s particularly bad.
I am thinking about the pandemic. I do this often, if not all of the time, but now I am mulling over in a mind a scenario where numbers are rising, where people are still dying, where wide swaths of people are refusing to get vaccinated. I feel my heartbeat quickening, I feel a small panic rising up in my chest. I breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth, conscious of every breath, trying to stave off an anxiety attack.
I’ve been anxious about this since February of 2020. That’s a long time to be anxious about a singular thing. I’ve gone from straight up panic to mild anxiety back to panic again. There has been no time - not even lately, not as things opened up, not as a I cautiously bought concert tickets for the fall - when I felt my anxiety ease up, when I thought we were at an all-clear.
You can find any number of articles these days with the phrase “post-pandemic” in them. That phrase is an itch on a scab that won’t heal. It irritates me, it makes me mad. We are not post-pandemic. There are still people being hospitalized, still people dying, we are still trying to get vaccination numbers up. There are variants running around, making even vaccinated people sick. I know they get a much milder version of the virus because they got the shots, but to me this is evidence that we’re still in the thick of things and we should not turn our heads.
But all that is not even the crux of what I am thinking about at 3am when I can’t sleep. I keep thinking about this world, this country, and the state of things. The world is cruel and selfish and the pandemic is making us truly aware of this.
I was hoping that we as a society would learn something from all of this, that our leaders would see we need health care and a UBI, that we'd see what's important, and who does the important work, But no. We've learned nothing.
People often say that a big, traumatic event can bring the country together, but over 600,000 people died and we can't even agree that vaccines are good, that getting a shot protects not only yourself, but those around. And the people who don’t want to get the vaccine - whether because they believe it’s evil, or they think the whole pandemic is a hoax - are the same people who refuse to see what was laid bare during lockdown.
Did they see those long, long, lines full of people waiting for free food? Did they see how many kids were going hungry once school was called off? Do they see how many people are one lost paycheck away from poverty? How can people have gotten through this pandemic and not learned a damn thing? How can they see how it went and not have learned to have some compassion or empathy?
It’s that lack of compassion and empathy that drives them to remain unvaccinated. It’s what compels them to write off people who are collecting unemployment or any kind of aid as lazy. It’s what makes them stand in crowds, unmasked, holding up signs that show their ignorance and selfishness. Instead of the pandemic teaching them to care for others, to be kind and caring, they have leaned into a cruelty and self-centeredness that threatens to rip us apart.
I read the news with trepidation. I look at charts and graphs and watch numbers slowly rise. I wonder what the fall will bring. I know there will never be another lockdown because to the people in charge, the economy is more important than saving lives. We will live with this virus in its various stages for a long time, because too many people pride themselves on being oppositional. They think wearing a mask is a “liberal” thing. They think vaccines are a political tool. They believe conspiracy theories, spread misinformation, act out in pure defiance of someone else’s ideology.
And here I am, in the middle of the night, wondering where we are going with this, wondering how the hell we are going to recover. I see so many people celebrating a victory that has not happened yet. Yes, I’ve been seeing friends and family and going back to restaurants as well. But I still wear my mask. I got my vaccine. I am cautious and careful and in no way do I think we are post-pandemic. I bought all those fall concert tickets with a false sense of hope. As the weeks wear on, I feel more and more anxious about those dates, about standing in a crowd of people all breathing on me and singing together in what is supposed to be an act of joy but could be something more akin to a mistake. Are we rushing back? Are we moving too fast? Is my anxiety disorder and my penchant for panicking at play here or am I right to worry?
I think about how many people lost their jobs in the last year or so. I think about the people who were evicted. The people who went hungry. The stores that had to close. The bands whose livelihoods were impacted by all of this. The venues that won’t make it back. We have changed as a society, fundamentally changed. I thought some good would come of this. I thought we’d see what we need to function as a whole, good society that cares about its people and take steps to achieve that but no, instead we get partisan fighting over stimulus checks, we get billionaires thriving in this environment, we get a world that is no better off than we were before the pandemic. And that’s a damn shame.
I don’t know what to do with my thoughts except write them down, disjointed as they may be. I don’t know what to do with my anxiety and worry except to try to talk it out in therapy. I don’t know what to do with my fear that we are headed for a fallout except hope for the best. But I have had hope before and that did not fare well.
I hope my fears are unfounded and we truly become post-pandemic soon. But I can’t help but dwell on the fact - especially in the middle of the night - that I have been given no indication we’re going to be ok.
Wear a mask. Get vaccinated. Be kind and caring. Have compassion and empathy. I don’t know where we are headed but I am going to try like hell to get there with grace.