A with an E

I'm really furious. I want so badly to be empathetic and understanding as she’s clearly in pain but if I'm being honest with myself I truly just feel burning rage. Where is her compassion? Where is her selflessness? I was worried about being ill after it and worried about throwing up all night and I still went. Where is her compassion for all those who die of this illness? For all her friends and family who want to be around her but might start to rethink this due to fear of being infected or infecting others in their lives - despite their own sacrifice and efforts - due to her selfishness. She’s been the most compassionate and understanding of how I feel and my disappointment at missing out on my first year of university along with everything that's come along with that and yet she won’t do the one fucking thing that would help everyone be able to return to their schools, workplaces and lives with some semblance of safety. I've been so fucking depressed and lonely. I've missed out on so many moments of my life I thought I'd have. No end of senior year, no graduation, no class trip, no first year of university, no dorms, no friends in Montreal, none of it. And still, I am incredibly blessed. These moments missed are extremely minor inconveniences when compared to the devastation and loss families around the world have faced due to this pandemic, losses I’ve been so grateful not to have experienced firsthand within my own circle of loved ones. It is a privilege that I can write this. It's a fucking privilege that we have access to life saving medicine that so many other people wish they had access to and don't. It is an unfair fucking privilege and it's unfathomable that more people aren't enraged at how unfair it truly is. But what's more enraging is that people that are given this insane amount of privilege to help protect their loved ones - and the strangers they interact with alike - and they choose not to. Not based on science or any other credible indication of threat but based of internet spewed delusion. We've got fucking infectious disease specialists who are worked day in and day out to develop such effective vaccines in groundbreaking time and who continue to work twice as hard to provide accurate, updating information to counteract misinformation and quell misguided vaccine anxiety and STILL people refuse to get vaccinated and walk out of a fucking appointment they have scheduled due to complete misinformation provided to them by their own fucking self-conceived and entirely unsubstantiated conspiracies. Anxiety is irrational. I understand that, probably better than most. Anxiety is irrational and does not respond well to logic. But when the most intelligent and well educated people within a certain area - in this case, infectious disease - who have been studying the subject for decades, tell you that having a five minute vaccination appointment can help save lives and you still allow your own selfishness and misinformation get in the way, it is infuriating. Fucking enraging. I don't want to hear you say one more fucking time that you feel badly I missed out on a "normal" first year. That's time I will never ever get back, it's just gone. Your year was probably extremely difficult too but, as you've yourself mentioned, you didn't miss any major milestones. Still it's time gone and that can be lonely and depressing and still despite this, the fact that both of us are still here, healthy and breathing without any devastating losses to bear is incredible. This past year and a half is not your fault, it isn't anyone's fault. But if you can't look at the past year and a half and bring yourself to make such a minor sacrifice to help prevent another year and a half of the same, I never want to hear any sympathy or complaints from your mouth again. It's so fucking enraging. You so badly, probably more than most people I know, want to go eat at restaurants again and "go back to normal". You break restrictions and constantly complain about restrictions and feeling lonely and sad at the current state of the world. SO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. You have this fucking privilege to actually do something to change it and instead you don't and it's so hard to be sympathetic about that, as much as i try. And trust me, I'm trying. I've been on so many anti-vaxx websites trying to understand your perspective, trying to really understand so I can be supportive and hopefully quell some of your misguided fears and still, no matter my efforts to be patient, kind and informative, it amounts to nothing. You don't go through with your vaccination appointment, you put those around you and yourself at risk and you still insist on going to a different province despite a potential risk of an outbreak at a local preschool even though you're entirely unvaccinated. God, it's frustrating.