In 2019, I moved back from CT to NYC. My mother, who suffers from severe anxiety, would call me every hour of the day to remind me how my son and I were in a "campo" (this is Dominican for very far with no human interaction only animals and the wild life).
What made matters worse was that my grandmother had her days counted as she was in a home. She was at the last stage of Dementia.
My mother got this notion that if my son and I remained in CT, eventually COVID would eventually catch up to us and we would, you know, die far away. So, to make my mother happy, I packed up and left to move back to NYC. God, I miss my car and my house.
My car has been replaced with our wonderful public UBER aka our subway system known as the MTA and my house has become a rented room with one of my relatives, who lives in an apartment located in the basement of the building.
My neighbors consist of the Superintendent of the building and his family as well as many Jerry's but no Tom. Oh, let's not forget about the worse rodents that could possibly enter your home.
They come in different sizes and the bigger they are, the more my anxiety and ADHD flares up. During the summertime, another species makes its way into the apartment. They are faster than ninjas and boy do they reproduce quickly.
I try to follow them with my eyes but its no use because in the blink of an eye, they disappear and then re-appear again when you least expect it. Yes folks, I am referring to the nastiest of all: The Flies.
Moving back was life changing, especially for my kid who now had to experience a whole new generation of learning. Thankfully, he is extremely computer literate and was able to pass the 8th grade with no problems.
The BOE really disappointed me in all aspects. Here I am thinking that my son would have an actual virtual learning platform experience just like I did in college. Instead, the virtual learning that I had imagined became a learning platform called Google Classrooms with no interaction.
Thankfully, I was able to home school my son when he did not understand the lessons being posted on this platform. It's a good thing that I remained unemployed until July 2019, the month my grandmother passed away.
By then, my son had already graduated from Junior High School and I was getting ready to return back to the workforce as an "Essential Worker". Holy crap educators, what happened with providing our future generation with a decent educational experience?? Our educators became lazy and took the easy way out:
Posting lessons on Google Classroom with the expecation that our children will get it and if not, we the parents would take over. I am still waiting for my paycheck from the BOE.
I had so many issues with this "Essential Worker" reference as well as accepting our new reality. Were we never essential to begin with as humans?? And so I decided to rename the group something else. Something that I was able to relate to more.
So I called this new workforce group "The Suicide Squad". Allow me to explain. Everyday that I woke up to go to work at 3:30 a.m., I ran the risk of coming across humans who had nothing better to do than to attack people. Everyday I rode a train that was packed with Humans where another new term "Social Distance" was not possible at all.
We "Essential Wokers" were risking our lives for a minimum wage that does not account for inflation nor our new recession. We were either next to each other or on top of one another on the train.
There were days where it would take me over 2 hours to get home as opposed to 45 minutes all because I refused to get inside a train with either people who were violently caughing or the "crazy" individuals who would approach anyone at random with an ill intention. My favorite sentence would always be, as loud as I could "Not today Lucifer, NOT TODAY...."
Supposedly, NYC had one of the highest COVID death rates. The news just made things worse sending people into panic mode. The mortality/death rates being announced on TV did not make any sense at all.
They were reporting these numbers with certainty that it was accurate. Here's a question: What about the people who died on the streets or who's death was not reported. It was impossible for the News Station to determine actual and factual numbers.
It was so bad that I had to ask my mom to stop watching TV for she would call me about 20 times a day. Every call started off like this "Did you hear what they said on the news??" With her Dominican accent. She never liked my cold responses and so she would break down, cry, yell and then hang up.
Twenty minutes later, she would call me back as if nothing happened. Whenever I went to the supermarket with my kid to get food for the house, I would not answer my phone because if I did, she would profusely remind me of all of the new protocols in place for the sake of not spreading this "virus". She would remind me to wear my gloves and two masks if possible. WHY??? Two are you insane? I could barely breath with one let alone two.
That was a dealbreaker for me being that if I wore two then my anxiety would just kick in leading me to believe that I would die a slow death from asphyxiation. Now she often forgets to wear her mask and at times she curse it out. When she does this I always look at her and ask "So what happened to all of the wear your mask speeches that you insisted on delivering to me?" She just looks at me and bursts out laughing.
This is truly hysterical especially coming from the one person who would call me over and over again in one day just to ask me if I had the mask on at all times. My mom deserves an award for Best Performing Drama Actress.
So here we are, 2022 and now I have so many questions. Each one leads to some crazy conspiracy theory. To make matters worse, I have a 16 year old who is also a big fan of these conspiracy theories. He is constantly looking stuff up and then bombards my attention defecit with these questions. Once he does that, I am fully engaged and my respones are all intriguing to him. My main question is the following: "Where is COVID Now?" Why is it that now we are clear to go back into society with this notion that because we received the "vaccine" we are all in the clear. The last time I checked, it takes years for scientists to research and create a vaccine. Let me not get started on this so called booster. The booster was the icing on the cake for me. What exactly did the "booster" boost? Had it not been for my jobs requirement in accordance to OSHA and the Health Department I would have not taken this booster. That was the worse idea ever because I was that small percentage of humans who could develop COVID side effects. The only good thing about that was that I had to stay home until my doctor tested me for COVID. Oh but it gets better, after I got my booster we had 6 people at my job who all tested positive for COVID and since I had the side effects, they mandated me to stay home for 14 days or until the results came in. My silverlining was that I got to take a paid staycation and was able to catch up on things I had to do at home.
When people ask me if I am fully vaccinated, I tell them of course I was many years ago when I was a kid. Everyone just looks at me like I have 50 heads. Then I proceed with my next response "Oh, you mean that flu shot that we got. I get those every year?" Immediately I walk away because I know what is coming next: a heated debate. Things will never be the same again because I was robbed two years of my freedom and my choice to go on my yearly vacation to an all inclusive resort. My aftermath is a bad case of anxiety with a BIG touch of ADHD. I am just glad that I won't be around in another 100 years when the next "pandemic" hits. If I could sum up all of the events that took place from the begining of this "pandemic" until now (yes I am going to include the "killer murder hornets") I would say the following: purge.
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