Look, I’m not disagreeing with the pair of doctors who wrote in The Atlantic that everyone is grappling with at least residual emotional detritus from the Covid pandemic that fucked us up 4 years ago and that’s why shit just seems so weird. I mean, how can you disagree with “In our lifetime, COVID posed an unprecedented threat in both its overwhelming scope and severity; it left most Americans unable to protect themselves and, at times, at a loss to comprehend what was happening. That meets the clinical definition of trauma: an overwhelming experience in which you are threatened with serious physical or psychological harm.” Yeah, no shit.
In my real job, I say all the time that we haven’t dealt with the effects of that asshole virus, and not just with all the students who had formative experiences cockblocked by lockdown. Senior years of high school, first years of college, graduations, to have all that over Zoom is gonna mess you up. And I know too many people who had to handle the worst of Covid firsthand, who said goodbye to loved ones through windows, who had empty funerals. Fuck, my stepfather (who really was my dad in all but sperm) caught it and didn’t treat it fast enough and it cashed in his check. Yeah, I’m traumatized, too.
