Yesterday, on my bus ride downtown to pick up some covers from Staples, I would guess that only 50 percent of the bus was wearing masks. While that maskless demographic was once only entitled (mostly white) men of a certain age, it seems to have spread, like the virus itself to all ages, genders, and demographics. While I normally just would have moved to be away from the maskless, I found myself surrounded by them with nowhere to go, breathing very shallowly.
I tried to figure out on the 40-minute ride if I was somehow being unreasonable. Granted, my safety precautions have kept me, despite being out in the world daily until 6 months ago, safe from infection. That alone may be proof I'm being wise in and of itself. Early on, the maskless were mostly just selfish assholes intent on being contrary. I'm not sure that's entirely it anymore, since these people don't even seem to be thinking about it all. I'm not sure they are intentionally NOT wearing a mask, more than just feeling (like everyone's wishful thinking) its no longer necessary And then I wondered what it was like--to be so sure that you will be totally fine. Because I have never. Not once. Not ever.
I blame my mother, of course, whose worry and anxiety was probably as genetic as her piercing blue eyes. Written like a script into my chromosomes and then grown like a hothouse flower under her care for the first part of my life. I was always taught to prepare for the worst even while hoping for the best and it's mostly served me well. I tend to operate under the assumption that if something CAN happen, it very well likely will. So be vigilant. Be ready.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I distinctly remember sitting in a car in early February with my best friend while she talked about being worried about covid, which was just beginning its slow deadly creep across Europe. I was not worried. Frankly, I was so tired and busy and preoccupied that I barely heard or watched the news. Even still, I thought, hell, this is America. We have agencies and systems to control things (yeah, I was obviously wrong.) Granted, we were both worriers,maybe why we're friends, and perhaps her response in march, in which she slept with a hatchet near her door and started stockpiling rice was a bit more dramatic than my interpretation of lockdown that involved a lot of Netflix and buttery bagels, But still, she was right in more ways than not. I was caught off guard. I said I never would be again.
So all along, I've been careful. Masks, vaccines, boosters, avoiding unnecessary maskless or unsafe situations. I've only eaten in restaurants a handful of times, a couple times outdoors at uncrowded hours or places that have a lot of room to spread out. I've gone to late-night movies with only a couple folks in the theatre. (back in March, I even took off my mask once we were seated. Not in April, though as cases began to climb.) Last June, when it seemed it might be over, I went a thrift store without a mask during that pre-Delta, post vax lull. (well I still had it with me, close in case I needed it.) I've been watching the numbers creep back up and my social feeds fill with more cases than I have ever seen before the past two months, so I won't be changing my ways any time soon.
My boyfriend, who is not a worrier, sometimes to my ultimate horror, does not take precautions, and does not worry quite as much as I do. It is one of the parts of his personality I adore under everyday circumstances, which mostly compliments my nervous worrying, but the past two years have often tested my anxiety. He got covid once in early 2021, and is in fact sick right now, not terribly, with something that may or may not be covid. Thankfully, we see each other once a week and I've won the russian roulette of not being around him when he was contagious. But it's still alarming. He is slightly younger and probably less at risk for a bad outcome overall. But still I worry....
Because I always worry. Because that's who I am, maybe. If we were dinosaurs, I'd be the one staring up at the sky and thinking "That can't be good.." as the meteor descended. Maybe genetically it makes me evolutionarily more gifted, but sometimes, like my mother and her worn out heart, I wonder if the worrying will kill me far more quickly than any actual threat. I've been working to stop my tendency to doomscroll and awfulize endlessly, but it's hard.
Maybe my more important question is how do those people live, without worrying that anything that can and will go wrong could? And should they, especially when it has the capacity to hurt others?
