Re: Corona Virus: is it the beginning of the end?
Honestly, after what I went through a few months back, not wearing a mask in public would feel like a giant fuck you to the person in my life who thankfully recovered, but was pretty sick there for awhile. I'll clarify that I wear my mask when I go to stores and stuff too, so it's not just about a work regulation. I think that was implied from my post, but I wanted to make it crystal clear.
I want to briefly touch on the point that was made about false positives significantly affecting a person's livelihood while I'm here. I do get that it kind of makes you feel marked, for lack of a better word, and that's no good for anybody's mental health. That would be particularly true, I imagine, for certain races who are being unfairly treated and/or blamed for the spread of this virus. I can see how someone might feel as though they're being unfairly judged once they come out of their self-isolation period, whether they ever showed symptoms or not. That is an unfortunate side effect of both racism and fear, both of which are running rampant right now. The mental health effects of this really can't be understated enough, either. That's one thing that still makes me feel helpless, because there's no good solution for it. Historically, western societies, the US in particular, have had a pretty shitty attitude towards mental health concerns. Despite the fact that the suicide rate has been projected to go up due to all the stress this has caused, never mind things like PTSD for frontline workers, and those projections have been shown to be at least somewhat accurate, most people are too wrapped up in their own issues to be of much assistance. Alternatively, they just dismiss what others are going through because they haven't lose somebody, so it can't be that bad, right? A shining example of this actually exists on this very forum. A few months back, someone posted a topic in which they invited anyone to share what sorts of things they were stressed about due to the current situation. That topic got very few posts, which is rather sad, but flip that on its head, and it's understandable. See, psychologists, crisis line workers, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals are just as much on the frontline as the nurses who hold dying patients' hands because their families cannot. Going to a mental health professional now seems almost selfish, at least to me, because they, too, must be completely overwhelmed. Yes, they are trained to deal with tense and even life-threatening situations, but nobody's equipped to deal with any of it on this scale. That, alone, has made me feel incredibly lost in the worst struggles I was going through a few months back. I can't even begin to imagine how surreal, yet horrifying, it must feel to be a medical professional right now. Surely, they need those resources much more than someone like me who could have lost a significant person in their life, ultimately did not, but still feels the gravity of, what to me, at least, was a life-altering experience. You don't just forget something like that, not even when it caused you to reevaluate yourself and make positive changes, because you also feel like you're a step away from unravelling at any given time when those thoughts of what if? and if only... take over, which they often do. And if I'm selfish enough to still be struggling, the sheer magnitude of the awfulness others must be struggling with is just too big for me to fathom.
-- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
