Covid

As we approach green after eighteen months, I feel this is the moment to unload all the feels I personally felt. I am hesitant because that journey took me to my knees.

First off, I had a premonition of sorts, I was overwhelmed with a real bad feeling at the first of March. Nothing I had ever experienced before, I reached out to my family and told them to pray against it. Something my father would have done, but I never did.

March 13 came and our province shut down. I was obsessed. I watched all the news, and all of the updates. I talked to my doctor and even she was scared. I have many immunocompromised in my immediate family. I work with kids and my daughter works with seniors.

We eventually had to eat and I went to the grocery store. I was almst done when I noticed the line to go to the cash being monitored by someone in a white suit and mask. Someone pointed out the arrows on the floor when I went the wrong way. I panicked! I literally ran to a staff member stocking shelves and said, ” I gotta go, I’m sorry but I can’t get these items!” He said, ” Ma’am I’m just delivering chips.” I bailed, I was sweating, half crying. My poor husband had driven me in and waiting for me. I didn’t know how to explain, but I didn’t need to. He told me I was not the first to bolt back out of the store empty handed. I was suprised at my reaction, that girl, I hadn’t met before. Fiercely independent, solid, a little bit of a rebel, fun…She was gone!

The grey areas made no sense, passing out food at the drive thru in a box, that obviously you had to handle to prepare. The reports on masks, saying they weren’t effective and then having to wear them. Every cough and sniffle was Covid, but you couldn’t get into a doctor.

As a parent of two diabetic kids, I was sanitizing and quarantining, before it was a thing, so that wasn’t new. All the recycling practices went out the window, plastic bags were back and public garbage cans were gone. Everything was peopley and everyone was paranoid. I stopped watching the news. It was my five year old grandson that hollered, ” Mom, Grammie is watching the Breaking News!” and then she told me,” We don’t watch that here.” That I realized that would probably be for the best.

I stayed home, birthdays, and deaths came and went unrecognized, couldn’t go to the hospital for a loved one. Scared to visit the elderly. It was a long but thankfully mild winter. I hibernate during those months, but this was a whole new level.

Green we go back to normal, I hope it’s the old normal. I am still fighting with myself, I am not quite ready to burn the mask. I won’t miss the forced solitude or arrows. I just hope it is over, to be in control of my own life again. Given back some choice on whether or not to mask, or go out in general. Unfortunately this 18 months have given me some real negative qualities. I have been working hard on letting people in and visiting others. I feel quite exhausted after I do it, but happy I did. Onward and upward, bring back that girl I used to be.