It is year 5, friends, and I will be honest: I am not doing great! My wife and I have been hit once again this evening with the startling shift in decorum when we asked the organizers of an event we would have liked to attend about their Covid policies (spoiler: there aren’t any, there won’t be any, and fuck you for asking, thanks).
Navigating a shrinking world that used to be so full is jarring. I am genuinely not sure how I am supposed to continue existing in society as a person with an autoimmune condition, the highest risk category beside the elderly as it stands- at least, until they change that, too. If by some miracle Covid were eradicated in an instant, if the world “went back to normal” tomorrow, I don’t know how I could after seeing the last four years of this. Four years of my world getting smaller and smaller and smaller until it is only me left to wither and blow away, a tickle of an afterthought to tease the damaged brains of all my peers, drifting; huh, wonder whatever happened to her. Who needs enemies when all and sundry are happy to abandon you- no, endanger you- for the mild inconvenience of wearing a piece of cloth? I talk to my old friends and they speak as if I already died; you did this! I want to scream, this is your fault!
but instead I nod and say how I’m doing well, thanks, hope you’re hanging in there too (no I don’t, not really. I hope you get exactly what you deserve). Everyone has gone mad and by the time they feel the effects of it all it will be too late- and a small wonder if I live to see it through, thanks to them.
I try to stay optimistic. It’s a big world, I guess. Perpetual house arrest at the hands of an effectively zombified populace is not exactly fuel for hope, though. I am not happy, but I don’t have sadness in my heart anymore. I barely have love left in me. All I have is anger, and hate. So, so much hate. A brand of hate which will never go away- and I hate that. Hate. HATE.
everyone else is making the same abdication you are. you can’t say you’re angry at them and give up yourself. yes, it’s a systemic problem but it’s also a personal one. you still personally risk harming the people around you. keeping distance from the people who are masked doesn’t change that. you’ve rationalized this but speaking as someone who’s disabled from covid, I hope to god I never meet you, because I will punch any ‘leftist’ who makes these excuses to my face.
please never speak on solidarity, on common struggle, of mutual defense. you put the lie to these terms, utterly bastardizing them. no one who makes such excuses to shirk responsibility to protect our vulnerable is a comrade of any kind. it’s such a core and basic tenant that we protect each other, where the state will not, such an essential part of the communist worldview that I do not understand how you feel justified in calling yourself one. you won’t kick a homeless person, but if you get them sick and they die of medical complications, well, that’s the state’s fault?
that this ought to be a collective effort does not negate any and all responsibility you bear. the consequences of your actions are that more people will get sick, more will suffer disabilities, more will lose their livelihoods, more will be made homeless, and some will die. who needs enemies with comrades like these.