The Lingering Remnants in the In Between
More than two months ago, I received my COVID-19 vaccine. Two pricks, an afternoon with a dull fever and I was home free. Almost instantly, I felt a sense of relief and reinforced security while doing things that would’ve felt completely benign during the 24 years of my life prior to that fateful moment. Things like — touching the keypad at the grocery store, then touching my phone, then touching the steering wheel of the car without any sanitizing in between. Things like — having an indoor meal with friends. Things like — hugging my mom and really meaning it.
However, I would be lying if I didn’t still feel it. The tiny hesitations before, during and after certain interactions. The slight internal wince at the thought of what’s on my hands and what’s still lingering there after the fact. The ripple of an internal panic whenever I’m walking on the street completely exposed, with no cloth mask covering my real thoughts and feelings.
The initiation to this health crisis was rough, filled with panic and an impending sense of doom that shook the foundation with which we all look at the world. I’ll never forget the store-long lines at Trader Joe’s of people buying everything they could. The apocalyptic scenes of empty shelves and abandoned streets and a looming sense that the optimistic spin I had taken on everything was increasingly naive. It’s an odd sensation, the feeling of remembering mundane things you did right before everything changed and seeing them as inconceivably dangerous now. That type of paradigm shift doesn’t ever go away, and I think now we’re all going to realize that.
For over a year, we’ve all imagined this moment in time. The moment a vaccine had come, we had gotten it and life could shift back into the familiar. We could enter and exit spaces without remnants of worry, connect as individuals within a larger collective and trust. We’ve lost so much trust. This time has arrived, and I do feel different. But I also don’t feel the same way I did. Not even a little bit.
I will never touch hands with a stranger again without something deep inside of me sending an alert. Alerts that I’m sure, with time, will increasingly go unanswered.
I’ll probably never be in a room filled with people without feeling a twinge of panic, a slight impression of discomfort from a time when every other person in the world was a threat.
As humans, our instinct is to lean on, connect and rely on others. There’s security in the larger collective. A crisis within one of the utmost intimate parts of being a human being disrupted that central foundation, and while the moments of recollection will be small, they’ll exist.
We’ll all go to concerts again, eat in restaurants, fly to foreign countries and sit right next to strangers on the subway. These acts have become elevated beyond simple ritual into precious parts of the human experience that we all didn’t realize were numbered. These joyous acts will return and contain just that — joy — but the emotion will be mixed with something else.
As you head into your favorite neighborhood bar and hand the bouncer your ID, there will be a shadow of this year as he hands it back to you, unsanitized.
Whenever you board a plane and sit down surrounded by strangers, the shadow will present itself.
And of course no matter where you are or what you’re doing, if anyone around you coughs there it will be — the shadow, reminding you of the sound that brought the entire world to its knees for over a year.
This shadow won’t attack, or cripple, or debilitate, but it will have a presence. Its intent to be protective, and its impact less beneficial.
We’re all walking away from this with unique scars, scars that have turned the lens through which we see the world. The scars will mostly be hidden, while we’re having dinner, or watching a movie, or even ordering at a restaurant. You won’t feel them while cooking, or reading or catching up with an old friend.
It’ll be the quiet moments in between. The in between spaces where our foundation cracked and grew back together. Life’s soft tissue. That’s where this year will stick with us. Because things that bring you to your very edge build strength, resilience and new muscle. That new muscle can pull you out of some amazing things, but the rest of you will still remember the view staring down the barrel.
So what I wish to tell you is — let those moments come. Let them be a part of your experience. Recognize that they’re your body, mind and soul trying to stay safe, after so much felt unsafe so suddenly. We’re all going to live with shadows and scars for a while, and it’s okay.
Following the wince, twinge and impressions of panic will come a brand new appreciation for the crowded, communal opening of life. Of society. Of security. It’ll feel different, everything new always does. But it’ll also reflect back to you a brand new self. A self that survived and made it through to the other side. A self that’s embracing a pivotal part of being human — endless strength through reinvention, lessons through resilience and dynamic change through adaptation.
