I have a tendency to forget just how serious this pandemic is and how many things it changes, or completely eliminates. Yes, I do things like wear a mask every time I go out, avoid unnecessarily touching things when I’m out, wash my hands, don’t bring my service dog with me unless I really need him, and stuff like that, but I’m in and out running from one doctor appointment to another so much that I forget how closed-off so many things are, like you don’t just make a quick run to the grocery store whenever you want to satisfy a craving or it would be nice to have a few things now, you go when you have to and everything gets bundled into one big trip rather than several small trips throughout the week. Most travel is banned and there are people who haven’t seen their close relatives and good friends even at all this year because they couldn’t travel when they ordinarily would have visited (and yes, you can use technology like video chat, but to some people, especially extroverts and people who like to touch other people in some way, it isn’t quite the same as seeing them in person, and I understand that). I’m by no means saying any of this shouldn’t be done, I want the pandemic to be over just as much as anyone else, and I see the logic behind all the precautions, it just still feels... surreal, I guess, to me.
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Yet in my new wildness and freedom I almost welcome the bitterness of alienage. For although nepenthe has calmed me, I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men.
-H. P. Lovecraft, "The Outsider"