Look What I Got!
Posting the victory of a vaccine on social media is all the rage and asking if you got it is the first thing everyone is asking. I can tell you with head hung low, I am not vaccinated and I feel like a leper. After literally thirteen months of my most trying times and as people are speeding out to restaurants and yoga studios, I feel more isolated than ever. I am a 42-year-old single, childless woman in Minnesota so I pretty much have felt like an outcast in my own state since age 32. On average, for every fourteen people I ask to do something, I get one yes or one invite in return. I am on an island, but I don’t feel like a rock.
I used to compensate for that by leaving on long solo trips to exotic places that people with kids most likely will never make it to. I made eyes at foreign men from corner cafes of far off lands. I attempted to surf remote beaches. Now I stare at my walls resenting them, longing for my old gypsy ways and a reason to get a haircut.
Now that I am the non-vaccinated and there is nowhere to escape to, I feel even more so that I am no more than the left behind. I can’t help but wonder if I did something wrong. While I have listened to hundreds of people talk about getting vaccinated, I am going to talk about what it is like to not. It sucks.
Before I can tell you how I feel, I need to tell you why I am holding off on the vaccine. One, I have been advised by multiple practitioners to wait. One of those practitioners observed people during vaccine trials. He cautioned me. One was the lead doctor of a department at the top-rated hospital in the country. This list also includes people like my acupuncturist who I see three times a month and has a good gauge as to where my health is at regularly.
The reasons they told me to hold off on the vaccine include that there is or was not enough data. I have an inexplicable autoimmune response that attacks my vision and can take it away. Covid-19 has a neurological component. My autoimmune response has a neurological component. Yes, this scares me. Another reason is that my body has been through hell this year. Eight months of prednisone, two spinal taps, a kidney infection are hard on the body. While I am a few weeks in, I have been advised to wait until I feel good for at least a month. Also, I want to have space for when I get this vaccine to take care of myself. It is just me taking care of me here.
Despite popular belief, Rafael does not cook or clean or bring in any money. I have worked week in and week out through all of my health issues this year. I have not taken more than three consecutive days off, except around Christmas. I am trying to pin-point a week where it is going to feel ok if I am out for the count for a few days and don’t have to maintain projects for clients. So I am waiting until the timing feels right, but the truth is the weight of the pandemic feels heavier than ever for me because while we seem to be at a pinnacle moment of getting the vaccine out faster than the variant can spread, it feels like no one cares or maybe they just don’t think about the left behind.
I probably sound petty. I feel petty. Like everyone, I long for a life I once had. And I am torn in two. I think, great, if you can go out and do these things without the fear or concern of not only getting sick, but free of the potential that you won’t get anyone else sick, then good on you. And if I can do it, then I guess do it for me. Someday I will be at surf camp in a hammock, or on a vineyard in a remote village, or lost on the streets of somewhere exotic and I will do it because other people cannot and I too will leave this life I don’t want behind.
