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A mask hanging on the door-handle of my dorm.
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Every day is the same. Get up, mask up, go to class. It's a routine I should be used to by now, but I'm not; it's a routine the world should be used to by now, but I don't think that's happened yet either. Maybe it never will. Maybe calling this our "new normal" is just us kidding ourselves.
Honestly, I'm not sure anymore. Sometimes I wonder if it will ever truly end. You know, they always talk about lights at the end of tunnels, but I don't think that light is always sunlight. That makes me sound depressed, but the political environment of the world at large right now is difficult not to get depressed over. Still, in my regular life, I'm generally happy.
There's a key separation between our regular selves and the self that is connected to the rest of the world. My connected self is usually upset, often perplexed, and occasionally amazed in the best of ways. The world isn't all bad; that's just what our media chooses to focus on. Humankind is strange sometimes.
In any case, my days are generally the same. I wake up and throw on my mask of the day. I go and grab some breakfast before the sun decides it wants to warm the day to be extra hot (per usual), then attend some on-line courses via Zoom. After that, I hop in the shower, make sure I grab my mask of the day again, and head to my in-person class (or depending on the week, classes). At night, I do homework, and before bed, I pick out a new mask and balance it gently on my door-handle lest I forget it the next day. The dirty mask goes in a little net baggie for the washer.
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| My bag of masks, washed and prepared for a new week. |
It wasn't always like this, though. At the start of my senior year for high school, worries of remembering masks and ensuring they are safe in hungry washers and dryers were never possibilities in my mind. Before, the only time I had worn masks were in hospitals, visiting sick or dying relatives.I remember the way those masks had scared me as a child being wheeled into a operating room for surgery to repair the growth plate in my wrist, right before they stuck an IV in my arm and sleep took me away. Before this year, these were my only experiences with masks. Now, they're an everyday part of life.
For the most part, every man, woman, and child I see has one on if they are outside of their homes or rooms, and I can't count the number of times I've been incredibly surprised at how someone looks without a mask on, when I've seen them later through Zoom or other on-line sources. It's a very weird feeling, even now. It's funny how the world changes and how phenomenons simply pop up out of seemingly nowhere. I think we've all (again for the most part) realized that this is just a new part of life for the foreseeable future. I think we're all mostly okay with that. But it's weird, isn't it? Even to this day, I walk out of my dorm and forget my mask. One day, I got outside without it on and sheepishly made my way back to my room, knowing I'd be late to class but understanding I couldn't not have a mask.
It's not a
bad reality, despite how cloying and uncomfortable masks can be in the heat, in classes back-to-back, in stores carrying groceries and goodies. It's not bad, and I understand that masks are good preventative measures. But it's
weird, meeting people for the first time without being able to really see them, having to worry about these little face coverings so much and so often, seeing pages like
this on our school webpage.
Maybe I'm just behind on the times, old-fashioned, unwilling to adapt. Maybe this truly is our "new normal." I suppose only time will tell.
