I hope everyone remembers what it was like, how it felt to live in this strange alternative universe of fear and social distancing. I hope everyone remembers it because some people will have to keep living it.
My first job was working the front desk at a gym for minimum wage. I had to scan member ID cards, re-rack weights, and clean the entire gym — wiping up people’s saliva from the sinks and their sweat off the treadmills, sanitizing the toilets and showers, and picking up the garbage they left behind. [...]
The need to speak my mind, and the heartache of not being able to, has only made the moment more palpable, more intense and full of emotion. But no amount of emotion is going to change my circumstances. No matter how hard I try, I can’t speak the words I want to say.
Each fall, for the last few years, I've lived on edge, hoping a major wildfire doesn't strike where I live and force me to choose between the lesser of two evils--stay and risk dying in my home or evacuate and risk making myself sicker and getting injured.
When chronic illness becomes a new kind of normal, it also becomes a cruel existence, one in which pain is a constant torture and exhaustion is as frequent as breathing.
