Whenever people and the mainstream media talk about "The trauma of COVID" they always mean the lockdowns and not the... you know... millions of deaths.
Well I have trauma about the deaths. I have trauma about the way our society was manipulated into sacrificing a huge chunk of the population with a smile and a wave, and how we just don't talk about it.
This same society still expects you to be horrified by the violence of 9/11 or whatever when the US alone was experiencing a 9/11 level of death every day and the disease is still killing, we just don't bother recording the spread anymore. What the fuck is wrong with people?!
I literally get (for lack of a better word) triggered when people talk about how hard it was to have to have to wear a mask or to not get a haircut or some selfish bullshit. Or when they act as though their kids remote learning for a while ruined them or something. It's all so petty. They just don't give a shit. They'd kill millions for a haircut. It makes my heart sink, my eyes glaze and I start dissociating.
Imagine if this was the blitzkrieg, and instead of going to bomb shelters people were just like "I'm sick of hearing about these bombings, I'm just going to pretend they're not happening and leave it up to fate." And then the bomb shelters are all closed and even the people who still wanted to take shelter are left to fend for themselves. What madness would have that been if they had done that during WW2? Dragging people into the street to be bombed?
I don't care if you were sick of lockdowns or restrictions! Fighting a pandemic should have been like fighting a war, we should have been doing everything we could to survive!
I am scared of these people. These brainwashed puppets. These eugenicists. If they can do this, well... it makes me feel surrounded by monsters. Like I can't trust anyone.
i lost a lot of respect for the established community organizations, broader public institutions, and the local small business tyrant community that all went mask off.
in a lot of ways, the powers have me on a chain and they yanked it to let me and others know that we are a resource to be sacrificed when the elites need treats. i guess i should say they reminded me, because i already knew this in the back of my mind and had been passively trying to arrange my life so i could have some buffer space. so really, i'm just more motivated to get into a different situation. i had grown somewhat complacent and had allowed myself to believe we could reform our way out of this reactionary hellscape.
covid has been a bleak reminder that our institutions will not save us and that they are adversarial to our goals. we must find our allies, build dual power / mutual aid networks based on immediate material needs. specifically, i have become far more antagonistic to the commodification of third places and actively boycott them while offering no-cost alternatives. my goal in life is to get to a point where i have a place to offer simple and nutritious free meals and space to a broader community of workers, a safe space for them to organize and learn, or even just revel in comradery. i haven't really figured it out yet, so far i'm just working on being efficient in the kitchen and adaptive organizational strategies that can scale but don't need to, and really only with my spare time/energy. pretty sure the key is going to be to make things that are simple and affordable (for me) but delicious and nutritious. it might just be a thing i am only able to do if i reach retirement or only offer to neighbors, coworkers, and family, but i would still find it fulfilling.
anyway, i don't have any answers. i spiraled for a while over the last years as i came to understand the institutional covid response (hypernormalization!), but now i'm trying to acknowledge the steps i've taken to realign myself since and stay focused on what is within my power. like hey, this site, right? we're off the corporate social media sphere sharing memes that would be banned. i'm also much more on-top of my vaccine booster schedule for flu, etc and even got my titres for all the common vax scheduling. and i've passed along relevant info to help others do the same (even under the most shitty ACA or private plan in the US, all vaccines on the schedule, including the titre tests to confirm antibodies are 100% covered by insurance with no copay... you just gotta ask).