A Privileged Mom’s Struggle in a Post-Vaccine Pandemic World
Life found a way and we are back baby! The kids are in school and soccer season has begun. We are going to restaurants, attending birthday parties and even going to Disneyland. The life I was so desperately missing has returned, but something is off. Am I the only one who feels like we time traveled through a worm hole of terror?
The same old activities and mom life trappings are there, yet I’m not the same. I’m emotionally, spiritually and physically exhausted. I wasn’t prepared to transition from my role of full-time educator, personal chef and chaperone to Uber driver overnight. This is not a complaint! Unlike my four year old Charlie who the first week of school told his father “I wish it was coronavirus again”, I am beyond thrilled that my kids are being educated by someone else and I am cherishing my windows of childfree time. Unfortunately it just feels all very heavy and sad and like we haven’t had enough time to process our collective trauma.
When I get to see the top half of a familiar face at school pickup or on the soccer field sidelines, the smile behind my geometric patterned cloth mask is genuine, but it’s a dimmer smile than it once was. It’s now the broken smile of someone who has been through some shit. I don’t know how I’m supposed to be. I don’t how how to respond to “how are you?” Depending on my mood and how much I feel like sharing I veer between “I’m fine” and “surviving!” How am I supposed to reintroduce my new self to the people I was not close enough with to risk Covid to hang out with, but who I still care about?
I want them to know about the anxiety riddled nights I couldn’t sleep, about my incessant doomscrolling, about how my skin burned from clorox wipes, about the dread I felt waiting for the results of my Covid test after a bout of food poisoning. Yet it seems silly to want to share this, because presumably the person I’m reconnecting with lived their own Covid nightmare. I hesitate to launch into a truthful reply to “How have you been?” because I don’t want to force them to relive their own trauma. So here we all are, back on the road of “normalcy” strapped with different sized loads but all still carrying the burden of the past eighteen months. We need pandemic group therapy similar to the post blip therapy Captain America attends in Avengers Endgame. Pre-pandemic it was much easier to be fake, to pretend that everything was fine in your life and put on a brave face, but now I no longer have the desire or energy to pretend that it’s all good and I don’t want to.
So here is my honest answer to: “How have you been?”
I’m tired all the time. I’m struggling to control intrusive thoughts and I’m starting to feel nauseous from the pressure that accompanies the, “so what are you doing now that your kids are in school?” question. I’m really happy to be able to see you again, but I didn’t really miss you. I felt pretty fulfilled by the core friendships I was able to focus on before we were all vaccinated and now I feel those friendships drifting away as we no longer have the time or reason to keep up the intensity of our mutual support system. I miss the feeling of purpose that homeschooling gave me, and I miss the simplicity of weekends where our choices were just beach or hike? I feel guilty for being a part of the class of people who were able to avoid exposure to the virus by working from home and ordering grocery deliveries and take out meals. I’m scared that my sons will get Covid before they are able to get vaccinated and I’m terrified that a new variant will emerge and put us right back where we started. But enough about me! How have you been?
Photo by Arturo Rey on Unsplash