Published on 12, July, 2020
Four decades of trying to get on. Fourteen years of school. Two courses of CBT. Surely, an abundance of clues given off by me… and nothing. *I* had to be the one to suggest autism. But not before all those decades of tacitly assuming and resolving that all the stress and anxiety were things I just had to be clever enough and strong enough to push through. Desperately trying to obtain and cling on to a shred of credibility, despite my weirdness. Being failed over and over again by a lazy, vacuous, uncaring, one-size-fits-all system. Having such a low opinion of myself for thinking I was a pathetic failure. And feeling so humiliated at being alienated by the ‘normal’ majority that this precious society is designed for. Trying so very hard to get on and succeed… denigrating and trying to push past my weirdness and difficulties. And internalising such nasty, cruel thoughts. Hating myself for being weak, stupid, gormless, needy… and projecting that onto strangers, because they represent the normal majority who seem to have it so easy by comparison and are so unguarded and homogenous in each other’s company. Is it any wonder I felt “f*** you, then” and kept them at arm’s length? And that was before covid AND the cladding scandal came along to terrorise me simultaneously, as I lived alone in this flat. You’ve really done it this time… you expect me to be like you? Shrug a shoulder and casually go wading back into social mixing despite the risk that remains? Like I cannot possibly do without you? After what you’ve done to me? Go f*** yourselves. That’s how I feel. I’ve had enough of the arrogant, flippant, lazy, casual, offhand, uncaring, vacuous, one-size-fits-all attitude. It got very old a very long time ago. And now, with this toxic, non chalant “we have to learn to live with it” attitude… they just expect me to swallow that? They expect me to need THEM so much that I’m prepared to risk getting long covid for the ‘privilege’ of their company in this shallow consumer culture that we cannot possibly do without? Either that or they expect me to be so flippant, casual or in denial about it (LIKE THEM) that when BORIS (that well-known philanthropist and teller of truths) comes on TV and says “you don’t have to wear a mask any more!” I’m supposed to be like them and say “oh, OK, great, let’s all get down bar and ‘ave a f***in’ brew!”? Er, no. You’ve really done it this time. How dare you expect me to come gormlessly sauntering back to your society after everything you’ve done to me. Shove it. I’m out.
Arx said:And now, with this toxic, non chalant “we have to learn to live with it” attitude… they just expect me to swallow that? They expect me to need THEM so much that I’m prepared to risk getting long covid for the ‘privilege’ of their company in this shallow consumer culture that we cannot possibly do without?
You know this is as good as it gets right? Covid is never going away just like flu, the common cold and all the other diseases you can catch jut by sitting on the same bus as someone. I'm not here to say anything good or bad about your friends but tbh if you think your life outside home is more in danger now than before the pandemic because of covid ... that just not born out by the facts.
It is an almost statistical inevitability that you will catch covid eventually. If you haven't already and been asymptomatic. You will almost certainly be fine as most people who caught it, especially those who had been vaccinated, were. It's no more rational to hide in doors from covid now than it was to hide indoors from seasonal flu before the pandemic.
It puzzles me. I don’t understand how people can conclude they should throw away their masks because covid is never going away. That’s like throwing away your sun tan oil because the sun’s never going to stop shining (in our lifetimes, anyhoo!) Feels to me like what they actually want to do is forget it exists. ‘Living with it’ actually means ‘pretending to live without it’. Which I can sympathise with… flip knows it’s been a horrible experience. But denial will only get you so far. But I’m also desperately concerned by just how many people think that the initial symptoms are all there is to it - people who may genuinely think that the virus has been made completely trivial, at least to them. I’m afraid they’re mistaken. Moreover, we still don’t know everything there is to know about this thing. Personally, it’s just too high a price to pay for a craft beer and gourmet burger with fairweather friends. Another common response is to say that it’s just one of a million things that could get you, so why resist? Well, that’s false equivalence. You can’t just lump every threat together, treat them the same and say there’s no point in resisting any one of them because we can’t resist them all. It just doesn’t work as an argument. And I think that’s because they’re not so much trying to present a robust argument than they are trying to rationalise pretending it’s 2019 again. Many of their arguments are thin because they haven’t put much thought into them or the situation. Perhaps because they don’t want to. I can spot a black-and-white / straw man defence mechanism response when I see one… I’m guilty of more than my fair share of those, I admit. Yes, I accept it’s probably impossible to avoid catching it unless you live alone on a desert island. But that doesn’t mean I should go mosh pitting. I want to minimise the number of times I catch it, because it is NOT the same as a cold or flu, even though the initial symptoms may bear some resemblance (as far as recent variants are concerned). Whoever heard of long cold? And that’s effectively a lifestyle choice on my part. I suppose in a way I’m lucky because I don’t have any kids going to school etc. I’m still able to control my environment to a large extent. Plus, I respect that different people have different social needs, so their choice of balance of covid risk vs risk of other types of harm is personal to them. I just worry that their choices are not as informed as I feel they should be, because if not then they’re potentially setting themselves up for a nasty surprise. I hope I’m wrong! But, to be honest, just as there is probably an emotional basis to many people’s post-lockdown mindsets, there is sure as heck one in mine… as I may have given away in my initial post! But I’m trying to work on it.
That's all very well for the majority who have no particular vulnerability to covid or long covid, but that is not the case for all of us. If I had stopped to think about flu before covid I had reason to be more troubled by it than I was!
What annoys me most is that I had hoped that attitudes might change such that people realised that with a bit more care, wearing masks (for those who can tolerate it) in crowded areas, especially where there is a lot of mixing of people not in regular contact, hand washing, keeping a reasonable distance etc might actually lead to a reduction in other airborne winter viruses. And staying home while sick and infectious! Why would people not see the benefit of not spreading disease around? Why do we just expect to have x number of colds plus flu and covid every winter?
The attitude of people who just can't be bothered to protect the vulnerable sickens me, people are still dying of covid and a new variant could arise any time. And people seem to think the vaccines stop spread, they don't. Nor do they stop long covid. They don't do nothing but neither do they do what was hoped, yet people act as if they do. And I do worry about the long-term effect of the not benign spike proteins they cause the body to make.
If I have to catch covid one day I would rather delay it until there is some kind of better understanding of how to avoid or at least treat long covid. That is my personal concern coz if I got that on top of what I have now my energy levels might be in the negative!