Hello, I’m reporting as the last human on earth to get COVID. Maybe you’re like me. You made it this far. Though all the rounds. All the way to this outer ripple, so far from the stone — the sirens and the silence — of the start. 

This is the ripple I’m riding. Way out here! Patient 600 million of 2022 alone. So far out that yesterday in a shallow hole of self-pity I posted the most obnoxious story slide … Which one?? You might be muttering under your breath. And you’d be right to do so… It was one where I overlay a sobbing blob GIF onto a screenshot of proof that I’d had to cancel a camping trip I’d been looking forward to. 

It didn’t take my brain too long to zoom across the ripples back to that first stone and delete the slide. Back to where people lost irreplaceable people to COVID. Where my dad was overnighting disinfecting wipes that he found in a dollar store in Bakersfield because I couldn’t find a single one in Washington. Where my daughter was Elsa for 60 days straight and I was scared to go outside. Where camping trips were something we “used to do”, and maybe would do again. 

I tried so hard not to get it for so long. Following every last rule as they came and went. Disinfecting groceries. Not disinfecting groceries. Cloth masks. Not cloth masks! KN95 masks. Hand sanitizer everywhere. The last few months my logical brain knew that it was “when” not “if”. That it was okay to get it. That it wasn’t 2020. That my kids’ lungs (probably) wouldn’t be permanently damaged. That we’d live. That getting it (probably) wouldn’t kill someone else. 

The CDC isn’t saying it but this phase isn’t completely unlike summer 1991 when the kids at the top of the cul-de-sac had chicken pox so your mom ran three infected sippy cup lids down and poured you some apple juice. And you nervously laughed with your siblings as you gave yourself chicken pox like… “Cheers babies! Let’s cry together in an oatmeal bath in a few days!” Just as a totally universal example.

But my logical brain and my wormy-pandemic-mess brain rarely fit together. And as the COVID circle tightened around me all I felt was the years I had been running so hard. I was so tired. COVID was a beast never getting slower, always shapeshifting, nipping at my heels every time I lightened my pace until I couldn’t run anymore. After so many miles, it devoured me whole in one snap of its jaws. And in it’s big belly I hurt so much but when I could think one thought straight, I was also relieved to be done with it. 

And now, day 5, I’ve been spit out! Worse for the wear, but I get to keep running. Load my small ones, who narrowly escaped this particular attack, on my back.

What’s less poetic, but clearer than ever is that I need to focus on repair work to the parts of my mental health that have been wrecked by this seemingly endless fight and flight. Because the beast isn’t tired of running or shapeshifting and it’s the not the first or last of its kind. Changing my mind is hard, but it’s part of the survival plan.