Emerging from the pandemic cocoon

There isn't really a blueprint for how to reimmerse yourself into a semblance of normalcy that has taken over a year to arrive. Although the prospect of returning to a new sort of normal seemed so tantalizing in the past, now that it's actually at hand, it elicits some trepidation and reticence for me, perhaps counterintuitively. 

After so many months of a muted, isolated existence where I mainly stayed at home, the vast majority of my social interactions were mediated through the veil of technology and I intentionally avoided strangers as much as possible, I find I'm left with a newly tender psyche that just simply doesn't feel ready to emerge from the pandemic cocoon. Yet I know that I must emerge eventually, instead of withdrawing ever more inwards and becoming a permanent recluse. 

I don't know of a blueprint for that process. I was in the last group of adults to be eligible for a vaccine and it was only a week ago that I passed the two-week threshold for being fully vaccinated. In the run-up to my own vaccination, I became even more cautious and reclusive due to the reports of more contagious viral variants. My stamina and energy for all that existence beyond the constraints of a pandemic entails has been severely depleted.      

Recent articles by Julia Carrie Wong in the Guardian and Shayla Love at Vice touch on some of the issues confronting us as we emerge unsteadily into a post-pandemic world. Wong's article examines the myriad reasons some prefer to continue wearing masks, even as CDC guidance now allows fully vaccinated people to go without. Love's explores "the mental and emotional toll of the last year" and why some people are still clinging to their pandemic behaviors.

Even though I have ostensibly lived through the pandemic relatively unscathed, the disenfranchised grief over the possibilities and relative happiness I lost in the process still lingers. As that disenfranchised grief is over things that are less tangible than an illness or death, it feels more difficult to adequately mourn, process and eventually overcome. 

Although I realize that others certainly had pandemic experiences that were objectively worse than mine, mine was stressful in its own way, which I try to remind myself is a valid conclusion. Dismissing one's own feelings as inconsequential because other people have it worse is not the path to emotional health. 

It all feels too soon. Imminent post-pandemic life is a rush of saltwater over raw skin and I am flinching away. I don't know how to get back to who I was before. While I don't expect to be exactly as I was prior to the pandemic, I also don't want to exist in this apprehensive in-between state forever. All the things I planned to do once vaccinated hang in the air and I gaze tentatively at them, but I don't reach for them, not yet. The inertia of pandemic ennui has some kind of a hold on me. 

I plan to continue wearing a mask in public indoor situations for some indefinite time, even though requirements to do so are vanishing. In fact, just the other night I ordered some new masks online after an inexplicable urge to buy something came over me--they were on sale, so colorful and so tempting. An attempt at soothing melancholy with impulse purchases, a hit of gratification when other forms are harder to come by.

Although I don't personally seek to appear more gender-ambiguous with a mask as mentioned in Wong's article, the greater anonymity granted by covering half my face is appealing in an era of widespread surveillance and the threat of unwillingly exposing myself to facial recognition software. Personally, I'm more concerned about surveillance rather than seeing a mask as a way to sidestep the social expectation for women to spend money, time and effort on applying makeup (which I rarely even wore pre-pandemic). I am confident in my appearance but I wouldn't mind more anonymity against surveillance.   

Yet, the main reason I'll continue wearing a mask is that I simply don't feel ready to directly breathe in other people's air, despite now being fully vaccinated. I realize it would technically be safe to stop wearing a mask, but it's going to take a bit longer before I actually stop. I don't know when exactly I'll feel ready to dine inside a restaurant again.  

The pandemic has been a stress-test on a societal level as well as a personal one. In this present in-between space, I'm trying to figure out how to recultivate myself and face the world again. While the pandemic itself brought stressful uncertainty, the end of the pandemic now holds its own form of uncertainty and a slightly different unease.   

"We desperately need narratives that move past apocalypse as an endpoint. What we need is a culture where the common experience of trauma leads to a normalization of healing. The in-between is a lot of work, reconstructed through extraordinary acts of care." (source)

Further reading: "Light at the end of the vial," from Addison Del Mastro's newsletter The Deleted Scenes

"My own pandemic experiences helped me understand people's mask anxieties today," by Marin Cogan for the Washington Post in the Outlook section

"Some women mask up to deflect attention, but what we really want is freedom," by Leigh Stein for the Washington Post in PostEverything