So, Thanksgiving. In which we commemorate historical lies unironically by spending unmasked time seated close together indoors. Usually with the people most capable of shaming us, pushing our buttons, and manipulating our emotions.
Very few people are their best selves on Thanksgiving.
You may or may not make your best COVID safety choices on Thanksgiving. Some of us will. We’ll follow the protocols we’ve chosen, and keep ourselves as safe as we can possibly achieve.
Some of us will not do that.
We’ll give in to our grandmothers’ pleading eyes and stay to dinner with the anti-vax cousin. We’ll let our shouty snarky nagging uncles convince us to take the mask off. We’ll hear someone sneezing, or coughing or complaining about a headache and we’ll stay right there in the stuffy room with them because it would just be too weird to leave.
And some of us will get COVID. Maybe despite our best safety efforts. Maybe because we couldn’t find our best safety efforts and instead let cousin Ralphie sneeze right in our reluctantly unmasked face.
Be as strong as you can on Thanksgiving. Please. COVID remains serious and long COVID is a horror.
But if you’re not, don’t waste time beating yourself up. Take some time to figure out your triggers. What got to you? Why this time? How can you be safer next time? Find the lesson, learn it, and let the error go.
If, gods forbid, you do get COVID - the same thing holds. Imperfect humans make mistakes, and sometimes those mistake have devastating consequences. You’ve already got to live with the consequences. Self-recrimination on top of that is unhelpful.
Also remember this. It may well have nothing to do with your choices. Being safe isn’t enough to protect you from COVID. You have to be both safe and lucky,
As far as I know, every Last Mask Standing subscriber is a human being. Humans deserve compassion. They deserve love. Please grant it to other people, this holiday season, and grant it to yourself.
Hi Alanna! What a nice surprise to come across this newsletter tonight - I vaguely remember seeing it previously but had failed to subscribe. My family will surely not get covid this thanksgiving, because we already have it! 😬 My wife and baby are mostly recovered but still isolating, while our 4yo and I have (knock on wood) managed to avoid infection so far. We just told the 4yo that we’re not going to see her grandparents after all. This pandemic sucks.
As always, well stated.