Warning:  Reading this may change your opinion of me, and not in a good way…

Hmmm… am I really going to publish this?  I’m not sure.

I sometimes publish just because I know other people read and think “same, girl…” and I want THEM to have that feeling.  I write because it feels good to me.  I publish because I want others to understand that they’re not alone…

Sometimes, though, when it comes to this quarantine and this pandemic, I feel I am alone.

Let me tell you about my COVID feelings.   I believe it’s real.  I believe the pandemic is real. I don’t believe the numbers are inflated.  I think that many people really did die from it.  Even if they did have pre-existing conditions, they were living with those… COVID killed them.

I don’t think it’s the same number of people who die every year from the flu or anything else.  I think a lot more people have died around the world in 2020 than other years during the first five months of this year.

But here’s my other thought…  this is the one that may give you the “shivers.”  They were going to die someday anyway.  Me, too.  You, too.  How much should we do to pretend that we can cheat death for awhile?

“Yes…but if we would stay home for another three months, they could live another twenty years.  You can’t take three months to give your mom twenty years?”

First of all, yes… I can stay home.  I just don’t want to.  But there’s really nowhere I can go right now…   Secondly, I can assure you my mom doesn’t want the whole world to stay inside so that she can live another twenty years.  Thirdly, there’s something to be said for quality of life and the reality of just HOW MUCH good we’re doing.

or “Fine, if you know that you’re just going to die someday anyway… why not do it now… what’s stopping you?”

I didn’t say I WANT to die… I said I’m GOING to die.  I do the basics to prevent it.  I look both ways when I walk out in to traffic, but there are other things I SHOULD do if I wanted to live forever–eat better, drink less, exercise more.  I don’t do those things because I ENJOY food.  I enjoy wine..  that’s part of my quality of life.  I’m willing to have those things knowing that I’ll probably die earlier.  Quality of life matters.

Has the quality of my life really diminished THAT much in the last two months.  Um, yes… it has.   Enough that I would be willing to kill people to get my life back?  No, but I’m super pragmatic. We’re all going to die even if I stay in my house for eternity.  If I go to Mexico, I’ll die happier.

And why does everyone keep forgetting that the goal was about the hospitals… and when the hospitals DIDN’T get overrun… and showed no real signs of it happening, instead of rejoicing, we said, “Now let’s stay in longer and get rid of it.”  Huh?

Maybe my feeling on death is so out of ordinary.  Maybe that’s why I’m afraid to publish this.  Yes, I think death is sad.  I have no “denial ” part of it.  I understand the reality.  It makes me angry and depressed…  but no denial.  The people who have died suddenly in my life have ripped out huge chunks of my soul.  I’ll never recover from it.

But it’s also as much a part of life as birth.  From the moment we start breathing we know one day we’re going to stop….I feel like the idea that we shouldn’t travel, shouldn’t go plays, shouldn’t go to our friends’ and families’ houses is just this false feeling that we have some control over our own mortality.

Then I go back to how it’s ONLY been two months and 10 days…  that’s true… that’s a very short amount of time…

But how many things have been taken away from me in this very short life in those 2 months and 10 days? how many moments did I plan that I would remember forever that have already been stripped away.?  How many seconds have been stopped in their tracks when I wonder whether I’ll be allowed to have these new moments, to make my new plans.?

Would I feel the same way if my own parents got sick? Yeah, yeah I would.  Does that make me a monster?  To you it might, to them I know it doesn’t.

Would I feel the same if I got sick.  Oh, absolutely.  My only fear of death is that it won’t be quick.  That’s it.  So… if I got sick because I decided to experience life, would I think I was stupid for doing that?  No, no I wouldn’t.