Unmasked truth

The CDC, the President, and Washington’s Governor have all suddenly announced this afternoon that vaccinated people do not need to wear masks anymore.  Like right now, if you are fully vaccinated, you can pretty much stuff all your masks in the back of your dresser drawer to be pulled out only for travel or if you get sick.

What!?!?

Rob and I are both fully vaccinated.  A blog post about that journey was planned next week.  I suppose for posterity purposes I will still post it.  Nevertheless, this totally unexpected and liberating news immediately applies to Woodhaven.

I gotta be honest, I am sitting here pretty bewildered. 

Over the past nearly 15 months, my mask has protected me.  And you.  My mask has kept me healthy.  It has kept me safe.  It has given me confidence to tiptoe into an infected world and interact with other humans.  It has become a security blanket.  A blanket that I didn’t realize until now that I was holding tightly; one that I am strangely resisting being taken away.

I should be celebrating. 

I should be excited that I get see people’s full faces and full smiles again!  Excited that I get to wear lipstick again!  Excited that I won’t have to suffer through hot flashes under a sweaty mask!  Excited that I will get to breathe in all the distinctive and characteristic smells of my church’s building!  Excited that I won’t have to strain to hear and understand service workers trying to ask me questions or wish me a nice day!  Excited that interacting with the world will no longer come with a wide-spread, unescapable visual reminder that all is not well or normal.

And I am excited, about all of that.

But I am also curiously super nervous.  Without warning, I have been set free.  I feel like I am standing outside a prison after a 15-month sentence, looking for a ride and trying to compute what comes next.

I don’t want to throw off my mask and return to life as it was in January 2020.  I couldn’t even if I wanted to; neither the world nor me are the same.  We are forever changed by COVID and our individual and collective responses to it.  I don’t want the lessons of the past 15 months…nor the trauma…to be for naught.

But in the midst of those lessons were also habits. Habits that were formed from necessity or fear.  And in many cases, both.  Every human on the planet this past year has been in a battle whose scars we will likely carry for a lifetime, some more visible than others. 

Short of declaring victory – especially as other nations are being crushed under the weight of a terrifying crisis – it appears today, in the United States, the worst is behind us.  We get to start cleaning up, assessing, culling, rebuilding.  We get to start figuring out what a better “normal” is going to look like now.  And, with memories of a sore arm, we get to face it head on.  Some with cautious, wide-eyed, rattled excitement.