We’re over it. The masks, the kids, the Lysol. Over it. The tragic hair, the diminished hygiene, the endless construction next door, the Zoom meetings from hell, the mind games with the unemployment office, the celibacy, the short tempers and long evenings, the looking forward to the mail, the feeling guilty about the mail carrier working double time, the corporate compassion pushing products we didn’t need even before the world went funky and febrile. The now-more-than-everness, the president-said-whatness. Over it. Does 99.1 count as a fever? Over it. Some of us have reached the outskirts of Netflix, and we’re over it. Some of us can’t make rent; over it. And so we are deciding to have a summer after all, it seems. A summer of playing freely, of living dangerously. One hundred thousand dead, 40.8 million jobless claims. Not past it, but over it.
"We can't keep fighting the virus from our living room," Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, R, clearly over it, said Wednesday.
"There is a pent-up demand" to resume normal life, said President Donald Trump, also over it, in the Rose Garden on Tuesday. "And you're going to see it more and more."
"I think everybody is kind of over it, you know what I mean?" says a Realtor named Toni Mock, on the phone from Jacksonville, Fla.
Her 2019 was better than any of her 25 years in the business. She wants that roaring Trump economy back. One thing that helped her get over it was the "boaters for Trump" flotilla May 16. She hopped in a friend's 40-foot sportfishing boat with some chicken wings and Corona beers (lol) and joined a fleet of vessels in the Intracoastal Waterway. The sun, the breeze, the "Trump 2020" and "Stop the Bulls---" flags, the kayaks and jetskis, the boats dubbed with carefree puns like "Knot to Worry" - it was "almost biblical," according to Mock.
"It's all a part of getting out there and letting everybody know we're not going to die from this."
And what if the coronavirus surges back, because we’re all over it and having a summer, and we do die from this?
"I have God in my heart, so God could take me out any day," Mock says. "He can take me out in any way he wants to. And if it's my time to go, it's my time to go. I don't think anyone I know is personally concerned. None of us are afraid, because we have God in our souls and God in our hearts. And we don't watch CNN." (...)
"Because everything has changed, everything will change," Mendoza says. "I have friends that planned out their life for the next few years, and now they have to do a whole new thing. I think a lot of students, myself included, are trying to release ourselves from expectations of what might have been, and grapple with reality."
Reality means grappling with the idea that the coronavirus might stalk us for years, even if scientists come up with a vaccine. Reality means wondering how much more we can take. Who wouldn't want to be over it? Beats being under it.
The percentage of American adults experiencing depressed moods has doubled during the pandemic, according to an emergency weekly survey conducted in April by the Census Bureau. Nearly half of adults in Mississippi reported symptoms of anxiety or depression; no state had a higher percentage.
This makes sense to Michael W. Preston, a marriage and family therapist in Jackson, Miss.: The lower your socioeconomic class, the higher your anxiety and susceptibility to mental illness. Preston, whose sessions are exclusively online for now, finds that his patients are frustrated either because others are not taking the pandemic seriously enough, or because they're taking it too seriously. Over the past three months he has seen the balm of togetherness replaced by the irritant of politics, made worse by the fact that there's nothing to do but sit in it.
"There's been a spike not necessarily in anxiety related to covid, but related to being stuck," Preston says. "People are just at the end of their wits. 'Michael, I cannot stay home for another day.' They will and they do, but I think most people are talking about being stuck."
byDan Zak, The Washington Post via ADN | Read more:
Image: AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez
"We can't keep fighting the virus from our living room," Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, R, clearly over it, said Wednesday.
"There is a pent-up demand" to resume normal life, said President Donald Trump, also over it, in the Rose Garden on Tuesday. "And you're going to see it more and more.""I think everybody is kind of over it, you know what I mean?" says a Realtor named Toni Mock, on the phone from Jacksonville, Fla.
Her 2019 was better than any of her 25 years in the business. She wants that roaring Trump economy back. One thing that helped her get over it was the "boaters for Trump" flotilla May 16. She hopped in a friend's 40-foot sportfishing boat with some chicken wings and Corona beers (lol) and joined a fleet of vessels in the Intracoastal Waterway. The sun, the breeze, the "Trump 2020" and "Stop the Bulls---" flags, the kayaks and jetskis, the boats dubbed with carefree puns like "Knot to Worry" - it was "almost biblical," according to Mock.
"It's all a part of getting out there and letting everybody know we're not going to die from this."
And what if the coronavirus surges back, because we’re all over it and having a summer, and we do die from this?
"I have God in my heart, so God could take me out any day," Mock says. "He can take me out in any way he wants to. And if it's my time to go, it's my time to go. I don't think anyone I know is personally concerned. None of us are afraid, because we have God in our souls and God in our hearts. And we don't watch CNN." (...)
"Because everything has changed, everything will change," Mendoza says. "I have friends that planned out their life for the next few years, and now they have to do a whole new thing. I think a lot of students, myself included, are trying to release ourselves from expectations of what might have been, and grapple with reality."
Reality means grappling with the idea that the coronavirus might stalk us for years, even if scientists come up with a vaccine. Reality means wondering how much more we can take. Who wouldn't want to be over it? Beats being under it.
The percentage of American adults experiencing depressed moods has doubled during the pandemic, according to an emergency weekly survey conducted in April by the Census Bureau. Nearly half of adults in Mississippi reported symptoms of anxiety or depression; no state had a higher percentage.
This makes sense to Michael W. Preston, a marriage and family therapist in Jackson, Miss.: The lower your socioeconomic class, the higher your anxiety and susceptibility to mental illness. Preston, whose sessions are exclusively online for now, finds that his patients are frustrated either because others are not taking the pandemic seriously enough, or because they're taking it too seriously. Over the past three months he has seen the balm of togetherness replaced by the irritant of politics, made worse by the fact that there's nothing to do but sit in it.
"There's been a spike not necessarily in anxiety related to covid, but related to being stuck," Preston says. "People are just at the end of their wits. 'Michael, I cannot stay home for another day.' They will and they do, but I think most people are talking about being stuck."
byDan Zak, The Washington Post via ADN | Read more:
Image: AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez
[ed. Such a disorienting state of being. A mixture of fear, uncertainty, loss, unreality, anger, hopelessness, helplessness, depression, desperation, etc. etc. A whole range of disquieting emotions, even after so-called 'openings' occur. Trying to be normal, but actually not, psychologically.]
