I’m Not That Person Anymore

The Author with The Metaphor, a Giant Hole She Dug @stergelandia

Deeper into the hole I go.

I don’t know where y’all are at with coping with this years-long pandemic.

Here’s where I’m at…

My neighbor across the street died from COVID yesterday. She leaves behind a 30 year old special needs son who needs constant monitoring. When her spouse left her penniless, she worked multiple jobs, while suffering from a chronic back injury, for the rest of her life to care for herself and her children.

My neighbor next door is in his 70’s. He had COVID last year. He recovered and got vaxxed.

He worked two jobs until he got sick last year. He’s now in ICU, having contracted COVID again.

He’s not expected to come home.

And of course, my carpentry teacher passed from COVID complications right after Thanksgiving.

I’m double vaxxed and boosted.

Unless I am emceeing an event, I wear a mask at while working outside of my home. After being ordered back into the office to conduct hearings remotely from my office, I receive emails almost daily of new cases of people who contracted COVID in my office. While in correctional facilities I’m around people who are recovering from COVID or who were later testing positive for it.

I want to keep myself safe. I do the best I can.

I have to keep myself safe so I can keep everyone else safe.

I keep seeing people who have had COVID 1, 2 or more times or who are vaxxed walking around without a mask after recovering.

I keep seeing people who know they tested positive for COVID (because they’ll tell you in hushed tones as if you are a confessor or co-conspirator) who are supposed to be in quarantine walking around with a mask under their noses.

I once viewed the world as a place to meet people, all people, where they were, rather than where I expected or hoped them to be.

This is probably a classic trauma response.

I’m not that person anymore.

This is not how I wanted to grow and reshape my boundaries.

I used to be a person who would listen to whatever point of view a person had for the sake of social graces and kindness.

I wanted people to be heard as I felt so often in my life that I was not.

I am not that person anymore.

This is not how I wanted to reshape how people have access to my emotions.

I used to be a person who would run and embrace friends, acquaintances and strangers alike as if they were the closest people to my heart, because, at one time, people simply being human made them close to my heart.

I know what it’s like to be alone and didn’t want anyone to feel that way.

I am not that person anymore.

So I am back, to square one, meeting people with suspicion, withdrawing from controversial conversations and keeping people at physical arm’s length.

And I don’t want to be that person anymore.