The New Abnormal

as we re-enter society, fears abound

I’m half vaccinated. I got my shot at Walgreens Thursday night and I’m anxiously awaiting my second shot on the 29th so I can complete the process and go back to normal.

The problem is, I don’t know what normal is anymore.

Like so many people, I’ve been living a quiet life since March of 2020. I go to the office four days a week. I go grocery shopping. I go to pick up prescriptions. That’s about it. No restaurants, no concerts, no sporting events. And even though I could go to a restaurant since they’ve been reopened, I choose not to. The thought of being out in a crowd of unmasked people all breathing the same air, laughing into the ether, shouting above the din of other diners, fills me with a dread that I fear will never leave me.

And now concerts are coming back. Sports arenas and stadiums once again are filled with the sounds of real cheers and boos. People are gathering in bars. Friends keep asking me if once I’m fully vaccinated I’ll go back to living the life I knew, doing the normal things I once loved to do. And the short answer is: no. Because those thing aren’t normal to me anymore.

I look at the half-crowds gathered in Yankee Stadium and Nassau Coliseum when I watch games and I feel uncomfortable, uneasy. How is it these people feel so free to resume pre-pandemic activities? The thing is, I don’t know how much of my trepidation is about COVID and how much it’s just become about being in a crowd in general.

I’ve always been wary of crowds. I have social anxieties and I never really went out much, preferring to stay in the comfort and safety of my own house, where my personal space is never violated, where I’m not forced to make conversation with strangers. In early 2019 I started seeing a therapist and she helped me deal with these issues. I was able to work my way out of my crowd anxiety and push forward enough that I started enjoying going to concerts. I felt pride in this, like I had made a breakthrough with something that plagued me my whole life. It felt great. I went to several concerts a month, mostly in very small clubs with very packed crowds and each time I would congratulate myself on stepping outside of my comfort zone, of setting new, expanded boundaries for myself.

And then the pandemic hit. We all stayed in, hid in our homes. There was nothing to do as everything was shut down and no one wanted to be around other people, anyhow. I retreated into myself and all the work I had done in therapy unraveled. The thought of going out once again became unbearable. I was afraid of crowds again and while the crux of that fear was born of different reasons - a highly contagious disease - the old fear of just being around people resurfaced. The newly found courage dissipated. Even trips to the grocery store have become fraught with dread. I go at 7am when they open, hoping to avoid a crowd. Friends and relatives try to convince me to go out to eat with them and I balk at the suggestion, as if doing so would put me in grave danger. And maybe it will, but I don’t suggest that. I just say no thank you, the way I always did.

I know I’m not the only person who feels this way. There are many of us who are afraid to reenter society as establishments and events reopen and try to welcome us back. How do we emerge from the depths of our fears, how do we walk back into the fray without having a panic attack over it? I don’t know. I just know that fears that I once put aside are back, and new fears are layered over them. I want to socialize. I want to get out again. I want to have large family gatherings. I want to be free to leave my house without thinking about how many people I’m going to encounter and doing the calculation on whether that number is worth the trip to Walgreens or the supermarket. But I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to do those things again, to live a free kind of life where I don’t worry about being around other people.

Society is going to look different now, I assume. Half filled arenas, social distancing marks on the floors of stores, masks for everyone. These things will stay with us for a long time; they have become part of our lives, part of our new normal. We’ve established new routines, new ways of doing things, of living our lives. In a little over a year we have changed the way we live and I don’t think we’ll go back to doing things any other way. So when people say they want to go back to normal, I don’t know what kind of normal they mean.

We don’t even know at this point how long the vaccinations are good for. Will we have to get vaccinated every year? Will new strains keep developing that we’ll have to guard ourselves against? Will masks be with us forever? How can anyone thing we can go back to the normalcy of early 2020?

There are those of us who want to take it slow and settle into our newfound society in a quiet way. But there are the people who are eager to get back to sporting events and concerts and restaurants and bars, and they are barging in on our fears, filling us with a dread as we watch them stand shoulder to shoulder, unmask to eat in public, yell and laugh within whispering distance of each other. I know the vaccinations are ramping up and more and more people are out there feeling free of COVID, and free of the fear, but for a lot of us, we will never be free. We’re changed. We’re forever wary now.

I’ve accepted that normalcy will look different going forward. I know my own personal world has changed, and I’m going to remain hunkered down even as people emerge by the thousands like hurricane victims cautiously walking outdoors to view the damage after the wind has stopped. Me, I’ve surveyed the land and decided I’m better off indoors.

I’ll feel a small sense of relief once I get my second shot, but I don’t think it will change much for me. Maybe once all my family is fully vaccinated we can have large gatherings again, outdoors. That’s about all I can hope for myself. As someone who has lived with anxiety and depression for many years, I’m used to this kind of life. It’s okay. I’ll adjust.

I hope you can find ways to enjoy the new normal. I hope going back into a regular society is good for you. I wish you the best in this changed world.