Fine, I’ll Answer the Question!
Just not the way you’d suspect
I wanted to get some things off my chest so I am dumping my thoughts here behind a paywall. The people I don’t want to see this would rather cut off both their hands than pay any money that might go towards for any app I use. Most won’t even read what I put up for free.
What triggered this was the last time I saw the Big Question “asked” anywhere was a friend’s Facebook page: “Personal credit card debt is soaring! Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
Everyone seeme to want an answer. I’ll give mine here.
No, I’m not better off. You want to know why?
Becasue four years ago, society was still shut the f — k down and I was happy during that time.
Because of my position in the medical world and where I worked, I counted as an “essential.” I was the least essential employee out of a staff filled with actual doctors and nurses, but there I was. I did not miss a day of work for that entire time and did not succumb to COVID until early 2022.
My days used to be spent helping my girlfirend get to school in the morning (as teacher and student respectively) before making my way to work. Instead, I had the wonderful option of walking to work every morning before the sun came out, the streets almost dead with silence.
My girlfriend at the start of the pandemic had beenunable to recover from an injury that made it difficult for her to walk. She was able to take the rest of the year to get the healing time she needed while being one of the pioneers teaching remotely. Her daughter was able to focus on her schoolwork while casing aside the increasingly untenable idea of actually being inside her school.
That left me to my own devices, only having to worry about getting groceries after work. Otherwise, the day was mine.
For half a year I walked through a ghost town version of Boston. Derived of its commuters, I appeared to have the city all to myself. It was wonderful.
At work, things were better. There weren’t as many things for me to do at first, and even when the hospital opened up a litte more, there was still free time. I spent most of mine writing.
It was one of the most productive times in my life, writing for a variety of publications that seemed to exist solely to speak out against the Trump administration. I took time to experiment in various styles that all paid off. I doubled down on my editorial duties at Oddball Magazine, making it an important outlet for art and literature during the pandemic, the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the end of Roe v. Wade and the 2020 election.
On top of all that, I got my second full length book of poetry published.
And that was on top of my girlfriend and I buying and moving into a house in October of 2020.
I don’t want say we had a “good” pandemic, but we were truly blessed that we were able to thrive while isolating ourselves to survive.
It wasn’t always wonderful. Outside of work, I was in fear of making someone sick. I became merticulous in disinfecting myself, making sure nothing entered the house without getting disinfected at the door. I was constantly terrified of infecting loved ones. Looking at houses and moving during the pandemic while keeping COVID free was stressful as well.
Thankfully, those remained the only obstacles. The nastiest contaminants stayed outside.
That included more than just the virus.
We celebrated the holidays alone at our new home (something that is verboten under current family traditions and dynamics). We were able to spend most of 2020 away from the toxic people in our lives who had been reveling in Trump’s cruel America and were becoming enraged that it was all seemingly going away.
My job gave me some interaction with similarly angry people, but these were strangers I could walk away from at the end of the day. It felt wonderful to be in our forcefield, though we knew it couldn’t last.
I wish I could say that it all started to go wrong after the January 6th insurrection. In truth, there were always terrible elements rising to the top. I lost Facebook friends due to my political posts and banter. One of those I defriended early on was encouraging people to gather for the Thanksgiving hoiday despite the recommended restrictions. I’m sure thinking like this was why my great aunt passed away from COVID shortly after Thanksgiving after being infected (likely by a worker) in her nursing home.
In many ways, January 6th, 2021 was a microcosm of the rising instability rising in the country. America had shut down for a very short while, and most people — particularly those who benefited off the labor of others the most — seemed posed to make the rest of us pay for daring to stay home and be safe.
Society was forcing itself back way to soon in 2021, and most were all too eager to get back to otherwise purposeless lives under such delusions as herd immunity. and maintaining freedom.
And now people are passing anti-mask mandates, for no other reason than to hurt and kill people.
In less than four years, the United States has turned into a nation of unmasked mass murderers. We will never know the full body count of how many people this collective carelessness has killed off. That would require more honesty than people are willing to express.
Over the last four years, I’ve seen lost loved ones either wiped out of collective history or rationalized to death (“They didn’t really die from COVID…”). I’ve witnessed inappropriate political baiting from the Trump crowd occur over literal dead bodies.
Furthermore, anyone the collective can’t make sick and wipe from memory, they try to beat down in other ways. We had some unexpected time away from the grind, and now we were going to suffer for that with the rest of our lives.
It’s why I eventually change positions at my job. Increased callousness and cruelty from the unhinged made my life untenable, and I couldn’t go resume it without change.
For years the unstable, mostly pro-Trump crowd has been festering. We’ve had years to prepare for a battle between senile grandparents to be picked apart more than young people nitpick the first lightsaber duel in A New Hope. The fact that this has been avoided thanks to Kamala Harris is a miracle, but we’re nowhere near the end of this mania.
When I read about the prospect of two pandemics happening at the same time (COVID and Monkey Pox), I was almost excited at the prospect of another shutdown.
But that will never happen again. Ever. The nation has made sure of it.
I say the nation because while it’s easy to blame the government for the overall lack of response to the pandemic, we can’t forget that healers can only do so much when the patients are noncompliant.
We’re beyond blaming the government. It’s us. It’s the collective squirming patient refusing to accept help. It’s us who have kept the pandemic going. Too many of us wanted to. too many people refused another way to live, refused to stop behaving in ways that hurt other people.
And now here we are, four years later, wondering if Trump losing again will change anything. Will it create another moment of mass hysteria? Something else to cope with for the next four years?
I don’t think I’ll better off then either.
