I started practicing smiling in the mirror a few times a week so that my muscles would still remember how. I guess some part of me still has hope that I'll need a smile again and that things will get better.
I lost faith in people in general a long time ago, but I think that was a pessimistic assumption and not evidence based. This year I watched as my entire country auto cannibalized on their selfishness and cruelty, and I no longer wonder if I was too harsh.
I saw people protest about haircuts and restaurants. They lashed out about the injustices of self-sacrifice of the smallest nature. Meanwhile, mothers could not have their partners with them during ultrasounds, and children could only have one parent with them in the hospital while they were scared.
I heard how much healthcare staff suffered, and watched as they were disrespected instead of appreciated in ways that matter. As they sacrificed time with their loved ones for yours. As they got infected. As they lost co-workers. As their mental and physical selves broke down.
I knew corporations were uncaring about their employees, like we all know, because we have worked for at least one. We are saturated in dependency on large companies decisions. To not offer paid leave. To fire everyone possible. To refuse to ask clients to leave if they aren't wearing a mask. To insist you keep coming in even if you aren't well. To spread illness and keep grabbing the dollars out of your bodies like piñatas that were broken a long time ago.
I had an assumption before that the government would not take action to save us if there were ever a disaster. I hate how right I was, and what that means for all the lives changed for the worse and lost this year. Politicians held up charts showing that only .2 or .1 percent of people will die. Those numbers are nothing, they said.
I witnessed my child grow up too much in one year. Asking me why people were still going out, why the government wasn't doing more, and watching her lose faith in people too. They have been inside all year except for walks and playing in the yard.
I stay up at night involuntarily worrying about what this means for yet unforeseen future disasters, and my children. There is no more hope in planning for the end of this because so many unknowns remain, like a choose your own adventure book where none of the options look like a good choice. And you aren't choosing the adventures. The entities all too happy to squeeze the populous for every dime they're worth choose. The people actively campaigning against science and reason choose.
I watched on the news as statistics got grimmer, as lives lost turned into the numbers we have always been to them. Is this what freedom feels like?
20 million cases total in the US
150 grocery store employees
150 children under 14
2900 healthcare workers
300 educators
350,000 mothers, fathers, friends, children, brothers and sisters lost in 2020
291 thousand new cases today (US)
1.7 current death rate (US)
3361 new cases today (Tarrant County)
99% ICU occupied in Tarrant County
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/grocery-workers-short-stint-as-heroes-is-over-but-the-dying-continues/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/23/us-healthcare-worker-deaths-covid-19-pandemic
https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/educators-weve-lost-to-the-coronavirus/2020/04
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/
https://www.tarrantcounty.com/en/public-health/disease-control---prevention/COVID-19.html
