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Colleen's avatar

Am I the only one who still just can't commit to things in the future? My partner wants to buy season tickets for our local symphony that start in September, and I just can't envision myself sitting in a concert hall surrounded by other people in six months. Intellectually, I know that we will likely be vaccinated by then, but it's just been so long in this "new normal" that I get panicky even thinking about a transition to the next "new normal."

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EmmaLee's avatar

I fundamentally don't believe that I'm going to be able to get vaccinated. I realize this is totally irrational: at some point, they'll have enough vaccine for everyone, and even my fucked-up state can't manage to mess up distribution forever. But deep down, I don't believe that I'm ever going to be able to leave my house. I honestly don't know what's wrong with me. I think that the thought of reintegrating into the world is a little overwhelming, and I'm dealing by pretending that it's never going to happen. I'm also feeling a little envious of people who have been vaccinated, or who live in states that aren't run by incompetent and malevolent people and therefore can expect to get vaccinated at a fair and reasonable time, and maybe it's partly that I'm feeling sorry for myself and wallowing a bit. But yeah, I'm not planning for the new normal because I haven't internalized the fact that at some point it's going to happen.

I'm dealing with specific grief and trauma, relating to a specific, traumatic death, and I actually think that maybe pandemic isolation has been a little helpful for processing that. I appreciate that nobody has expected me to go on like everything was normal, and I think it helped me to have some space to process. But I have been really bad at predicting how I was going to react to things, and maybe I'll fall apart once I have to interact with people and whatnot.

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