Hey you.
Yeah, you.
You doin' okay, bud?
Because it's okay if you're not.
Things are weird right now. The world is closed. There's a heavy vibe in the air that weighs on you. Life is all out of sorts, and will be for the foreseeable future.
And it's okay to have feelings about that.
It's okay to grieve your sense of normalcy. It's okay to grieve cancelled plans, cancelled trips, the day-to-day life you were freely living before all of this occurred. It's not selfish or silly to be sad, or frustrated, or disappointed, or angry. It's okay to retreat into yourself while you process. It's okay to emotionally eat all of the quarantine snacks. It's okay to feel all of what you're feeling, even if you're not even sure what all you're actually feeling.
We are facing unprecedented times right now. We've never, as a collective global society, experienced something of this magnitude. There's no built-in memory function for "global pandemic". There's no saved setting in our brain that says "Oh yes, this is how to handle this!"
We are all of us winging it to the best of our abilities; some days we are successful, other days we fail miserably. And that's okay.
We will get through this. Life will eventually return to some semblance of normal. That normal may be a little different than what we were all used to, and that's okay. We will adjust and start to move forward, and we will all find our groove again.
Hang in there.
We as a global community are in this together.
To those of you deemed essential enough to still have to go to work, THANK YOU! You are the glue holding the fabric of society together right now. You are appreciated more than you may know. Stay safe.
And to those of you sheltering in place, I know you're going stir crazy. I know you're stressed. But you're doing your part for the greater good of society.
Try to think of it this way:
You're not stuck at home. You're safe at home.
I'll say it again.
You're not STUCK at home. You're SAFE at home.
And finally, to those of you ignoring the shelter-in-place requirements because you don't like it...
WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!? STOP IT!!! STOP BEING SO GODDAMN SELFISH!!! THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU OR YOUR PERSONAL PREFERENCES OR PREVIOUS PLANS!!! THIS IS ABOUT FLATTENING THE INFECTION CURVE SO AS TO GIVE DOCTORS AND NURSES A FIGHTING CHANCE AT TREATING CRITICAL PATIENTS WITHOUT BEING OVERRUN!!! THIS IS ABOUT PROTECTING VULNERABLE COMMUNITY MEMBERS, EVEN IF YOU AREN'T ONE OF THEM!!! THIS IS ABOUT REDUCING THE NUMBER OF FATALITIES AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE!!! THIS IS ABOUT SLOWING THE NUMBER OF INFECTIONS AND STOPPING THIS VIRUS IN ITS TRACKS SO WE CAN GET BACK TO NORMAL LIVES AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!!! DO YOUR PART!!! STAY HOME!!! GEEZ!!!
*Ahem*
I digress.
Stay home. Stay safe. We will get through this together.
