As I sit here waiting for the day I return to work, my thoughts are wandering all over the place. The U.S. is slowly opening back up and none of us really know what’s going to happen. We have all these people giving us “educated guesses” and theories. Since I’m not living in fear, I don’t really care about what could happen. I care about keeping myself and the people I’m around as safe as possible so I’m going to stick with the masks and the gloves for a while. There’s something to be said for respecting a killer you can’t see.
In spite of my actions, I’m only so safe and I know it. The truth is I’m greatly impacted by how the people around me choose to live their lives. I live in a smaller town in Florida, and from what I see, most of the general public have abandoned even minimal precautions in favor of going back to the normal they’ve always known. No masks, no real distancing, and no caution. It’s the same old same old and it’s troubling to me. I’m not talking about the stores and businesses. They’re doing their best to be safe. I’m talking about their patrons. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as ready as the next person to put all of this behind me. To be “wild and free.” Right, I’m ready to come and go as I please, say “Hi!” to a stranger, hug my elderly Mom, and shop without gloves. Simple things; but, oh, so important in my day-to-day life.
Honestly, I’ve done better through this whole lockdown experience than I thought I would. For one thing, I’ve picked my battles and only fought the ones I could win. I can’t win against the coronavirus and I’m not going to try. I’m going to do what I need to do and thank God I’m healthy. For another, I’ve walked three or four miles in the sunshine almost every day in areas where I have minimal to no contact with other people. Just being able to appreciate the trees and animals goes a long way towards restoring my peace of mind. It’s my prayer time and it works. It’s also my thinking time.
What’s important about my thinking time is things come to me I haven’t thought about in years. I’m a small town girl in my mid-fifties who’s lived through a lot of “stuff.” Part of that stuff was the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Here we are thirty plus years into living with HIV in all it’s various incarnations and it’s just an unpleasant reality. We think we know all there is to know about the disease including how to manage and prevent it. Life goes on and everybody has sex with whomever they please, however they please. People still get sick; but, for the most part we treat it. Yes, I know that’s and over-simplification. But, I don’t think most of us spend a significant part of our lives thinking about AIDS anymore like we did in the past. One day, given time, Coronavirus will be the same.
However, back in the day (the early to mid 1980’s) when I was a teen-aged college student attending a small town University in rural South Carolina, things were different. We were just learning about a wicked, incurable disease that was breaking on the scene with a vengeance. By the time we were reading the magazine/newspaper articles introducing the horrors of the disease in terms of mass destruction, HIV was already known in Africa and big cities like New York and London. Where I lived, we were years behind the times.
I remember being horrified by what I read. Yes, I knew there were incurable diseases out there like cancer and I knew people died from everyday diseases like the flu. But, sexually transmitted diseases were embarrassing situations that didn’t cause serious problems unless they weren’t treated. Most people didn’t die from them. Let me say at the time I’m talking about I lived at home with over protective parents so I wasn’t in any danger of contracting this new, 100% fatal disease and, supposedly, none of my friends and acquaintances were either. Right.
At the time I learned about HIV it was called AIDS and it was only found among drug users, in the homosexual community, or in Africa. I’m not being a homophobe or discriminating against anyone. I’m telling you what was believed in the early days. We didn’t know you could get it by blood transfusion or that babies could be infected through the birth canal. A lot of vile things were said and done in the name of ignorance and mean-spiritedness. Even where I lived. Years later, we figured out our theories and suppositions weren’t right. Unfortunately, before we did, there were people out there knowingly and unknowingly committing murder by disease because they’d become infected through heterosexual sex which wasn’t considered risky behavior in the early days. There still are.
Sounds a little like Coronavirus doesn’t it? We don’t really know anything about the disease. Not like we will in a few months and years. However, we’re still being told things like you probably won’t get it if you’re young and healthy. While that may be true for the most part, it isn’t true for everyone. If you don’t believe that, just watch the Social Media posts by the Spring Breakers who partied on our Florida beaches a few weeks ago. Several of those youngsters ended up on the Internet warning anyone who would listen that that wasn’t necessarily true and they were now suffering with disease.
All I can say at this point is we have to resume our lives and we have to get back to work. We just need to do it with wisdom and consideration for the people around us. Here in America, a lot of us tend to think more in terms of what I want and less in terms of how my actions might impact others. That’s not necessarily evil. It’s human nature. Self-preservation is built into us and thank God it is. Most of us wouldn’t survive to adulthood if it wasn’t.
However, as we go forward, my hope and prayer is that we navigate this chaotic new world unfolding with generous dispositions, cautious joy, and a degree of wisdom we might not normally employ. Stay safe, enjoy your life, and know we will get through this. This isn’t the first pandemic the world has weathered and it won’t be the last. There truly is nothing new under the sun…Just experiences that are new to us.
Until next time.
Calla
Tori Lennox Author 