Can’t Handle this Part

When the pandemic was no one’s fault, I could handle it. Shit happens. Shit that kills hundreds of thousands of people happens.
When the handling of the pandemic was the Federal Government’s fault with a heavy load landing on Trump I could handle it. I considered that White House’s management skills to be an aberration. Now it was an aberration that killed grandpas and grandmas all across the country, but an aberration all the same.
Now it’s our fault. Now it’s the fault of my friend who says he’s waiting to get the vaccine because he wants to make sure we won’t turn into zombies lol. My friend’s zombie fear has me crying in the car worrying about my daughter’s health. My other friend’s need to do his own research before getting the shot has my wife whispering to me this morning “she (our daughter) is scared about wearing the mask at school, we have to tell her it’s okay, we have to act like it’s a fun thing”. I have very few friends who haven’t gotten the vaccine. But they have lots of company. Millions of people across the country, with real fear, with real distrust, with real schedules, with an inability to prepare for a bad response to the vaccine. I don’t know how to change these fears. I have people in my life who will try a pill they’re handed at a party who are nervous to take the vaccine. So this one is our fault. This one is the fault of our friends, our neighbors, our partners.

I can’t forgive us. We could be relaxing right now, we could be working on new problems. We could be picking out new outfits for our kids for school without finding matching masks. But we can’t. Instead we are staying up, sweating bullets, thinking about our relatives, our babies, our selves. I can’t forgive us for this. This pandemic will define this decade, this pandemic will define my adulthood, it will define my kids childhood. And it didn’t have to. Straight up, it didn’t have to.