We\u2019ve been through a staggering crisis,\u00a0a global Pandemic, and I don’t think any of us will ever be the same. Life is\u00a0divided into BC (before Covid,) and AC (after Covid) and almost everything has
become harder. \u00a0<\/p>\n
In March, 2020, when the virus started\u00a0rearing its ugly head, I got an appointment at Dodger Stadium on the first day\u00a0the vaccine was available. Ed, a friend of a friend, drove himself and me there,\u00a0we didn’t know each other, and it felt unreal as we fed into a line of cars
that was miles long. Literally. We inched along for six hours wearing masks,\u00a0something we weren\u2019t accustomed to doing. In fact, I never saw Ed\u2019s face and he\u00a0never saw mine.<\/p>\n
We\u2019d been told to drink a lot of\u00a0water before we got the shot and I had some in the car, but when I saw that\u00a0were no bathrooms for miles, I decided not to drink any more. About three hours\u00a0in, I realized that we were stuck in that line, that there was no way to get
out and no way to know how long we\u2019d be there. My breath got shallow as Ed\u00a0turned to stare at me. Panic was showing in my eyes. \u201cDo I need to call someone\u00a0to pick you up?\u201d he asked me kindly. I shook my head and did my best to calm\u00a0down. There were just so many questions without answers. Was the vaccine safe? Would
it really work? Was there enough to go around? Since so many people had been on\u00a0ventilators and had died, most of us wanted the vaccine, but we were also\u00a0afraid of it.<\/p>\n
After four hours, we finally made\u00a0it into the parking lot of the stadium where it was complete pandemonium. There\u00a0were rows upon rows of switchbacks, we rode back and forth for two more hours\u00a0but at least there were porta-potties. Ed and I had appointments at 4 PM and\u00a04:15 PM so when we pulled into the tent at 9:30 PM, we were afraid they had run\u00a0out. They hadn\u2019t, but they had run out of cards that confirmed that we\u2019d been\u00a0vaccinated. After the injection, we were supposed to wait for fifteen minutes\u00a0in case there were any side effects, but while we were still rolling down our\u00a0sleeves, they motioned for us to move along. Too many cars, too many people,
too late in the evening.<\/p>\n
The next morning, I was nursing a\u00a0sore arm when I learned that 7,730 of us had received injections at Dodger\u00a0Stadium the day before. I went back there with Ed for vaccine #2. I had tried\u00a0to get it somewhere else, but they told me I had to return to my original
provider. This time the wait was \u201conly\u201d two and a half hours and again, we wore\u00a0masks the whole time. A year or so later, Ed and I saw each other\u2019s faces for\u00a0the first time at a small gathering of vaccinated people.<\/p>\n
When the quarantine began to loosen\u00a0up, we were glad to get out of our homes but many of us had developed floating\u00a0anxiety that we couldn’t name as we re-entered the world. It\u2019s still around. There
have been so many times I\u2019ve felt off balance and I had moments of hypochondria,\u00a0unusual for me. I told a friend I thought I had Covid every day for five\u00a0minutes and people\u2019s behavior was erratic. \u201cIt\u2019s my personal choice not to wear\u00a0a mask,\u201d some of them said. That may be true for shooting heroin or having unprotected\u00a0sex, but when a virus is airborne, it affects everyone like second hand smoke, and
wearing a mask under your chin or your nose or not at all does nothing to\u00a0protect you or anyone else.<\/p>\n
Eventually we got the word that\u00a0masks were no longer mandatory but people who were five times vaccinated were still\u00a0getting it. We had a whole new set of questions: Crowds or only small\u00a0gatherings? Masks or no masks? Hugging or not hugging? If we get it, will it do
permanent damage? As I re-enter the world, I\u2019ve come up against a phenomenon\u00a0called \u201cmask shaming.\u201d Several times, I\u2019ve been the only person in a crowded room\u00a0wearing a mask and people have glared at me. I once got called out verbally for\u00a0protecting myself by a woman who\u2019d had Covid twice.<\/p>\n
Rejoining life is complicated. Our\u00a0work methods have changed and they most likely won\u2019t go back to the way they were.\u00a0For me personally, I was concerned with losing intimacy in my writing classes\u00a0but if I wanted to continue, I had to take them on Zoom. It worked out well and\u00a0now I have students in different states and across the globe which has had made\u00a0my work more interesting and rewarding. I consider myself lucky that\u00a0during the Pandemic, I had my\u00a0writing to manage my anxiety and I still do. Michelangelo said, \u201cIt is well\u00a0with me only when I have a chisel in my hand.\u201d<\/p>\n
As I venture out of my home and\u00a0rejoin the comings and goings of daily life, I\u2019m reminded of the ten trips to\u00a0the Philippines I took during the eighties to research the faith healers. I\u00a0stayed for weeks and each time I got home, it felt like I had one foot in the\u00a0East and one in the West and it took a while to get both feet under me and feel
whole again. Today, it feels like I\u2019m straddling life again with one foot in\u00a0quarantine, the other in the world at large, trying to move forward without\u00a0tripping over myself. And as usual, the answer is to give myself a break, to be\u00a0patient, and to treasure my friendships that help me feel connected. I need to remember\u00a0what we all just went through, to be compassionate and to take the time to lay\u00a0low and heal so I can slowly but surely become whole again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We\u2019ve been through a staggering crisis,\u00a0a global Pandemic, and I don’t think any of us will ever be the same. Life is\u00a0divided into BC (before Covid,) and AC (after Covid) and almost everything hasbecome harder. \u00a0 In March, 2020, when the virus started\u00a0rearing its ugly head, I got an appointment at Dodger Stadium on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2357,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2358"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2359,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2358\/revisions\/2359"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}