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An Almost-Feral Chick’s Plan for Reintegrating into Society, Post-Pandemic
A friend of mine admitted to me recently that he had judged me when I told him I was having anxiety about reintegrating back into society after the pandemic.
For saying that I felt almost feral and perhaps even a little agoraphobic — and not at all sure how I was going to prepare myself for leaving my house on a regular basis again.
He told me that he had judged me for it — until he then had his own outing that made him understand how I might be feeling. We had a good laugh about feeling almost feral, but I’ve been feeling anxious about it for a while now and as much as I half-laugh about it, I also knew it was something I was going to have to face.
In fact, I had to face it as recently as last week, when my 18-year-old daughter had an honors convocation ceremony at an indoor venue at the beginning of the week, and then her high school graduation at an outdoor — but much more crowded — venue in the middle of the week. In addition, we also had a few family celebrations at restaurants scattered here and there throughout the week.
The thing is, I am not at all concerned about contracting the virus. That’s not what my anxiety is about.
For me, the anxiety is about being in my protected, introvert bubble for the past year and not feeling sure I want to leave that safe, secure, lovely bubble. Luckily, when I started to feel this anxiety more and more, I also started seeing some terms and phrases that have been resonating with me in a big way.
I read these articles and suddenly felt seen. I felt like I wasn’t alone in feeling this way after more than a year of lockdown.
I began feeling this anxiety — something I have never experienced in my 51 years — only during the last 6 months or so. It’s interesting to me that it didn’t happen at the beginning of the pandemic…or during the summer last year when things partially opened up again and I could watch my son play a limited season of baseball. The anxiety didn’t begin for me until right before Thanksgiving, when the world began to partially shut down again.
