My loneliness is killing me

And I...I must confess, I still believe...still believe (in airborne precautions)

Photo by Tom Pumford on Unsplash

This one is for my Covid-realist, airborne-airware pals.

It is grueling to live this way, isn’t it?

Feeling like you’re on the margins of society, like everyone is living a life you’re not allowed to fully participate in. Like you’re the black sheep.

The cognitive dissonance of living a “covid conscious” (CC) life while 99% of the world has moved on and returned to “normal” (but let’s not forget about the >20 million people who died worldwide from Covid and who no longer have a voice) is hard to stomach on a daily basis. Especially when you know the science is on your side.

Maybe in 17 years, they’ll finally believe us. I think by then, though, it’ll be too late.

It almost feels like living in an alternate reality sometimes. Often, continuing to take precautions on a daily basis (including wearing a mask to keep yourself and others safe) feels bleak, depressing, upsetting, discombobulating, isolating, and ostracizing.

You’ve might have lost friends, relationships, marriages, family, job opportunities, and so much more.

You’ve opened yourself up to harassment, abuse, and sometimes violence from those who don’t understand and take it out on you for simply wanting to keep yourself safe. I guess it must remind them of unresolved trauma from 2020.

You can’t go out to bars and restaurants. You can’t smile at people and they can no longer see your face. You can’t walk out your front door without thinking about the precautions you need to take. It’s a daily calculus. It’s mentally taxing.

In essence, you can’t participate safely or freely in society.

You want to explain to people that no, you aren’t sick, you aren’t contagious, you don’t have OCD (though if you do that’s fine obviously! but not the point), you aren’t living in fear, and you haven’t “lost your mind.” But it takes too much energy, and they probably won’t believe you anyways.

Though I’m immensely lucky to have made some CC friends, I still feel incredibly lonely most days. In part because my friends/family that isn’t CC will never fully get it (nor this new version of me), but also because I only have a few CC friends that I really feel close to and with whom I can commiserate and/or be around safely. CCness is an important per-requisite for my new friendships, but just because we’re both CC doesn’t mean we’ll get along.

It’s a lonely road for sure, but knowing what I know now about how horrific and disabling Long Covid can be, I’d rather keep masking than ruin my health further (or cause someone else to develop Long Covid like me).

But to make this path sustainable, we cannot go at it alone. Community is integral to not burning out, especially when this is already such a solitary road.

I’m still working on building my local and virtual CC community but I wanted to share some of the ways I’ve personally made CC friends and acquaintances (along with some other ideas I haven’t tried yet but have heard about) in case it can help your journey be slightly less lonely.

Avenues for making CC friends:

• Zero Covid Community on Reddit

• CC4CC Community on Reddit

• Your local “Still Coviding” Facebook group (have made several CC friends through mine) (search “still coviding” + [your city/state] on FB)

• Covid Safe Hotties forum

• so very virtual’s newsletter

• The Decolonizing Bruja’s mask-required event roundups

• Joining your local mask bloc

• Refresh Connections (have made a few pals on here, BUT also some concerning stuff came out recently about forcing users to apologize to them for “defaming” them among other stuff…it was cringe and weird)

• There’s also a few CC people on Dateability

• PandemicPals Hangouts

• Find a local CC/clear air org near you (action map)

• Have seen some CC people/groups on the queer app “Lex”

• Find CC writers on Substack and send them a DM

• StillCoviding Forum

• Search instagram for “CC” or “Covid Conscious” events - there are some regional/local instagrams that put together CC event roundups

• Discord: Covid Conscious Vegans discord, Covid solidarity discord (and many more if you search Reddit or your local CC FB group)

• Covid Chemistry (I don’t personally use it but I know people who do)

• Covid Meetups (not sure how active it is anymore - I think it depends on location)

• Finding and DM’ing people in instagram comments in threads like this one (literally did this, made a signal group, now run a community of 30 local CC people!)

• Spoonie Social puts together a weekly roundup of CC friendly events

• Less recommended: traditional dating apps (I did meet one CC friend on Hinge and they invited me into a local CC whatsapp group they run / to CC events they host); occasionally I do see some CC people on the normie apps

If you have any other ideas and recommendations, please let me know in the comments!

Note: Most (but not all) of my essays are stream of consciousness, mostly because I’m too tired and brainfogged with my LC and M.E., but also because it’s a nice experiment to be (mostly) unfiltered. And at least you know a human actually wrote this! I will never use AI to write any of my pieces. If I’ve made any mistakes in this piece, feel free to let me know (feel free to send me a DM…but please, do it with kindness). Thanks in advance for excusing any typos, spelling mistakes, etc.