The Masked Mom

I'm so damn tired.

I'm tired of the restrictions, of wearing masks everywhere, of not going anywhere, of not being able to do my job, and of trying to get Lizzy to do her distance school work in a timely manner without either of us losing our tempers on the regular. But I do what I'm told to do - by actual experts - because I care about people.

If we had behaved ourselves early on - all of us - we might be able to have schools open, at least a little, to a few people at a time, so these things could happen.

I'm tired of the people who want to "open the economy" so badly that they completely ignore mask mandates (or requests; our governor should've been tougher from the get-go), and thereby consign us all to longer restrictions. Dead people can't stimulate your economy.

If you really cared about getting the economy open, you would wear the masks, wear them properly, wash your hands, not try to deflect every damn thing against disenfranchised people. It's a similar mindset to the "pro-life" brigade; if they really cared about babies' lives, they'd be all for socialized medicine and sex ed and birth control and paid maternity leave and subsidized child care. It's what people who actually care about other people do.

I'm tired of masks and not seeing my friends and not getting a massage/mani-pedi/haircut as much as antimaskers are. Really not a shut-in here, not by choice. I am a social creature and I would really love to have a conversation - maybe even with hugs - in person, with someone who is not either of my children or my mother. Or a night of nerdy board games with my friends, when the biggest thing we had to worry about was not bringing people's allergens and whether the kids heard that one round of Cards Against Humanity. But guess what? That's right, I'm forgoing these things because - all together now - I care about other people.

We can't have those things, because some of you think that you know better than actual experts in the field, or are miserable and want the rest of us to be miserable too, or you just don't give a crap about other people. 

You know who's really in a bad place right now? Public school teachers. They're doing their best to learn new systems, rework plans, and do everything online. Or they're forced to work in unsafe conditions. Or some unholy mixture of the two. But some people are so wrapped up in their own needs that they don't even see other people unless it's to denigrate them for not doing the impossible, and doing it well. 

And it makes me tired.