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Dear COVID,
You’ve been in our lives for over two years now. You contributed to the death of my niece. You’ve caused the deaths of the family members of my clients. You killed my therapist’s dad. You took the boss and two employees of my brother-in-law.
You’ve created a lot of confusion too. You’ve exposed the inadequacy of our systems and revealed the darker side of our humanity. The CDC was a confusing mess at handling you. I don’t trust the information they provide anymore. As people began hoarding toilet paper and guns, it made me wonder about our humanity.
You even were the impetus for me to stop seeing someone. He woke up sick in the morning and took a COVID test. When he was waiting for the results, I unknowingly dropped bye to say hello and gave him a hug. When I later found out that he tested positive, but had not told me he was feeling sick and still chose to hug me, I was in shock. I didn’t understand how he could not consider the impact of his actions on me. It was in the beginning stages of the pandemic, when everything felt very real and scary. When we were supposed to quarantine if we were even exposed. I had to shut my therapy practice down for a week due to being exposed to him. It was very upsetting, and he could not understand the insensitivity of his actions. His actions, along with our ensuing conversations, helped me to see this was not the kind of person I wanted to be around.
I don’t blame you. Maybe I should thank you. You helped me to see something that would have come out down the road in other ways.
And maybe the same could be said for what you have revealed about the CDC, human nature, or our other injust systems. We cannot fix what we cannot see. Hopefully not that we actually see we can do some fixing.
All of that said though, there is certainly no bringing back the people you have taken from us. It’s hard to believe how many.
Sometimes it doesn’t even feel real. Sometimes I can forget you exist. Until you impact yet another person in my life. My dad is sick with COVID now. It’s the first time you’ve been in his life. Even though you seem to act more like the common cold or flu now, it’s still a little bit scary.
That’s probably the primary emotion you have brought to us all: dear. And of course fear likes to bring all of its friends like confusion, despair, anger, and more.
I know you’re also just trying to survive. We want to survive and so do you.
If your survival requires a parasitic relationship with us, I don’t think we can co-exist. So it’s either you or us. And at this point - it’s looking like we are going to be the survivors.
So I’m writing you to let you know you might want to rethink your strategy. You don’t have to benefit us, but maybe there’s a way we could both co-exist without severely damaging the other?
I’m guessing this letter might be in vain. You’re clearly pretty callous. I wonder what it is like to know you’re killing someone and to watch it slowly happen. Actually, no, I don’t really wonder that. I don’t like to think about that at all and I don’t want to know. I had to watch my mother slowly die from cancer. It was awful. I would never want to cause that kind of suffering death.
You would still be an interesting therapy client though. Though given your sadistic, psychopathic tendencies, your level of acuity would not be appropriate for my private practice or level of experience. You’d need someone who specializes in the dark shit. That isn’t me.
So, if you need a referral, let me know. I’ll help you find someone you can talk to. Though usually psychopaths don’t think they need help. They just want to keep on being psycho.
Hmm, I guess the more I write the more I realize how futile this letter is. So I guess I probably won’t send it.
I guess I should moreso move toward accepting who you are and that you’re not going to change. I’ll do my best, but you’ve certainly given us a lot of hard things to accept.
Conflicted,
Jackie
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