HOW TO: Mourn Pre-Pandemic Life
Dear Raquel,
I can’t believe almost a year has passed since the pandemic started!! I miss my old life, how do you stay optimistic?
Sincerely,
Mourning the Past
Dear Mourning the Past,
Remember those early days back in March? So naive, so frantic! We were all raw dogging it in the streets, no masks to speak of, running through the grocery store and buying up all the Lysol, hand sanitizer and toilet paper. I’d like to think we’ve evolved since then but I don’t trust any of you.
That said, I too, am absolutely shocked at how quickly this year has flown and not to brag, my life fell apart in mid-December well before COVID stole my thunder. I’ve definitely hit the “do I get a dog or do I start an OnlyFans” stage of quar a couple times but I’ve recently developed this super healthy coping mechanism and I think it could really help you out, too.
Selfishly, I’m sharing these hot tips because I don’t want to see you guys back on your bread baking bullshit again.
It’s super simple: instead of glorifying the “Before Time” we need to revel in all the shitty things it had to offer. It’s like when someone dies and suddenly everyone online is posting their obit photo being like “RIP, such a light in my life” and they weren’t even close. It’s super creepy grief tourism that has no basis in reality, because ya it sucks Uncle Rick died of a heart attack at 54 but also, he was kind of an asshole and almost exclusively ate red meat. Sorta had it coming, ya know? And besides, you never even talked to him at Thanksgiving or Christmas anyway because he gave off incel, 4Chan vibes and was always drinking too much.
I know it’s unconscionable to imagine pre-COVID as anything but a sparkling Utopia as we lay on the floor, staring up at the ceiling disassociating for the umpteenth time this week, but I promise you, pre-pandemmy life wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows.
Here are a few of the lamest things from pre-March 2020 that I hope stay in the past when we finish vaccinating priority groups (the immunocompromised, the elderly, health care workers and extroverts) and things go back to “normal”:
Going to a concert and waking up to 46 of your IG followers with the SAME blurry video of said concert: I miss concerts TERRIBLY, don’t get me wrong, but I think we can all agree these videos were the worst. The audio was terrible, your friend could always be heard in the background getting the lyrics wrong and the $14 dollar beers were making them sway so bad the video quality looked like they were Snapchatting on an Android. I was at J Cole too, falling over the 300-level railing because my friend dropped her phone — but logically, I know that no one else cares. Put your phone down & live in the moment!
Brunch: setting an alarm to pick from a menu with approx four things to choose from and all of them have eggs involved? No thanks. While I have been known to throw back a mimosa or seven, I’m tired and I hate breakfast foods. Post-COVID I’m starting a Change.org petition that makes brunch illegal so we can all sleep in and meet at 4pm at a dive-y taco place and eat corn chips and drink tequila instead. In the biz we call that #activism, baby.
Commuting to Work: Remember the days when hordes of disgruntled people would force their way THROUGH you as if you were AIR and not a flesh & blood HUMAN, just to get on the subway right when the grimy doors screeched open? Those people are the same ones who honk the minute the light turns green (if they weren’t schlepping it on public transit) and I am NOT here for it. You are the weakest link, goodbye!
Sunday Scaries: Remember this literal disease of young adulthood? Panic would set in at about 3pm just in time for the hangover (physical and moral) to wane. Your self-loathing and stress would force you to meal prep and clean your house so as to start your work week off semi-productively. Now, every day feels like Sunday AND Tuesday AND Friday all wrapped into one meaningless blur. Now, we have the freedom to inspire full-blown panic any day of the week and even STILL don’t need to prep five lunches for it. Time, after all, is a social construct.
Running into people you know on the street/in the store/at an event: Do you know how many times I’ve answered a fake phone call just to avoid someone? There is no length I won’t go to avoid an acquaintance if I’m not in the mood for small talk. I’m basically Kelly Rowland in the music video for “Dilemma” when she texts Nelly using an Excel Spreadsheet.
Office Socials/Happy Hour: Remember working in a cubicle with other people in close proximity? I worked somewhere once that used to have monthly birthday celebrations where they’d make you stand in the centre as everyone stared at you and sang “Happy Birthday” and watched you slice into grocery store sheet cake. As someone who only likes attention I cultivate FOR ME, BY ME, it was awful. Also, I have an eating disorder Karen, I’m not putting your shitty cake anywhere near my mouth, much less at 2pm on a Tuesday!
No more social media envy: Everyone is in the same fresh hell as you and I. Remember those people whose entire personality was taking elaborate trips? Well, they’ve all had to stop posting tropical vacation pics on IG and find other hobbies or worse — get jobs! No one is having fun on the reg and posting about it online and those who are trying to make lemonade out of a big, dumb lemon are doing it in really hacky ways like getting engaged or getting puppies or buying houses — even though the world is very clearly throttling toward it’s fiery end. It’s like, can’t we just let 2020 suck and try again next year?
So remember to stay positive but also, being kind of negative is okay once in a while, too. No one asked you to be a hero — we’re all just trying to survive.
Hope some of these help get you through it!
