Melancholy twenties

I thought the end of the pandemic would be marked with a celebration.

Like, an actual one. With balloons and kazoos. At least some kind of social revolution. Something akin to The Roaring Twenties… without the jazz and cigarettes. I thought we would flock to the streets and dance around the murals that we’d painted in front of them when the whole world was closed.

If we were all in this together, it seemed logical that we would emerge from it with a sense of unity.

I thought that all the things we had to live without for those years would taste sweeter once they returned, the way anything you eat is the best thing you’ve ever had when you haven’t eaten all day. The way your own bed feels like the best thing in the world when you’ve been away and sleeping on unfamiliar pillows for a little too long.

I thought the ecstasy of live music, a normal social life, and the return of air travel would just bowl me over and restore all that was taken away. Almost make up for it.

I very literally thought we would all probably get a few days off work and the whole world would come together in one giant party, with a deeper appreciation for what we’d once taken for granted, and a fierce camaraderie built between us from what we’d lived through.

I thought there would be such a definitive ending that the history books would be full of pictures of that one particular day. And I thought that on that day, all my baseline dopamine levels would return like clockwork.

But that didn’t happen.

Contrary to what I expected, the end of the pandemic was a slow, quiet, undocumented fade out that everybody looked away from as we toiled away at our day jobs like nothing ever happened. And things returned to our lives gradually, in their own time, almost boringly.

Now we wander through our nights, sometimes going days or weeks at a time without mentioning the pandemic to anyone. Sometimes even without thinking about it. Like it never happened.

And while we might have been told we were all in this together, it feels like now that we’re out of “this”, we’re kind of on our own.

When someone says they have (or think they have) covid now, people say “Oh, is that still a thing?” like it’s an old, shitty punk rock band that we’re surprised is still touring. People say “Do we still have to isolate? What are the rules?” as if to imply that the rules of human decency would be different now. Like we’re trying to put distance between then and now by acting like it was a long time ago and everything about it is irrelevant now. But it wasn’t and it isn’t.

I thought that life would feel normal again when we were all vaccinated. But I got my two shots and nothing changed.

Then I thought life would feel normal again the first time I got on a plane after the borders reopened. But I flew to San Francisco in late 2021 and it was just the same old apocalypse with a different view and less rain.

I thought things would feel normal when the mask mandates and vaccine passports were no longer a thing. When dance floors were allowed again. When I went to my first concert. When I worked a day in a regular office with other people around again. When I would finally sit on the Skytrain and look out the window instead of at my phone. When I wouldn’t have to blast music into my earphones at max volume just to feel something anymore. When we finally held a celebration of life for my Mom.

I thought something would feel like the end. Or a beginning. Or some other beginning’s end, as the 90s would say. Nothing did. Nothing does.

I still don’t breathe the same. I don’t sleep the same. I don’t work the same. I still don’t talk to the bitch who knew she had covid, showed up at my New Years Eve party anyway, and proceeded to kiss me at midnight and infect me and seven of my friends. Some parts of me may stay in lockdown forever, and tolerating inhumane behaviour for the sake of being nice seems to be one of them.

I still remember what it smelled like to spritz a face mask with tea tree oil before putting it on. I still remember what it sounded like to hear the clanging of pots and pans at 7pm every night. I still remember what it felt like to say goodbye through a phone screen.

Four years ago today, many of us were sent home from work to shelter in place for 14 days, and most of us are still there. The way we live and work was disrupted so dramatically, and our lives remain forever changed.

The last four years showed us who we are; who our friends are; and who our friends are to us.

There are people (thankfully, only a couple) I stopped talking to because the pandemic showed me the monsters who lived behind their eyes. There are also people I realized I’d only been keeping in touch with out of routine, and once all of our routines went out the window those people never made their way back in.

There was not one single moment in 2023 that marked the feeling of the pandemic being over, like I thought there would be. There was no celebration to commemorate restrictions being lifted and a return to normalcy all at once.

But by the end of last year, it did feel like it was over. At least, to me. My baseline dopamine levels randomly felt familiar again for no reason at all in Autumn of 2023. By winter of 2024 I could listen to music at a regular volume again. There was nothing left to drown out.

Some things hang around, like still pushing elevator buttons with my knuckles. Like washing my hands a lot more than I ever used to. Like how every movie theatre ticket is an assigned seat now. Like the grief that is now just a normal part of my days.

Like the one remaining face mask that I can’t bring myself to put away. It still hangs defiantly on my front closet doorknob, confident in its pink flower print because it was once so important. It once got washed and spritzed every few days, and now it hangs uselessly, ignored and gathering dust.

Some things leave, like the scars from the 2021 stress acne. Like the long covid brain fog and depression clouds that followed me around wherever I went for most of 2022.

And some things came back. Like the joy of writing. Like falling back in love with life.

And now, I feel like I am home again.