I went to Walgreens a few days ago to buy toilet paper. I go for the store brand because it’s decent quality (not the unfortunate shred-while-you-pull-it-off-the-roll kind) and a decent price (not the costly who-pays-this-much-for-TP kind). I was happy to see the four-packs on sale for $1.99 instead of the usual $4.99, so I grabbed a few. Thing is though, the four-packs used to be six-packs. And pre-Covid, those store-brand six-packs were $5.
Pondering this gave me flashbacks to the early days of the pandemic when everyone went insane over toilet paper — ordering in bulk online and clearing shelves in a frenzy as soon as stores restocked. I recall folks announcing on Facebook when they found the stuff, as if they’d struck gold, alerting the rest of us where we might find some if we went right now. Added to the stresses of a new deadly virus, the acquisition of masks, not knowing when it’d be safe to see our friends and family, and wondering if we should sanitize our groceries and mail, we now had to worry about what we were going to wipe with. I found myself counting squares and then painstakingly folding said squares into smaller squares to ration. (I’m still mad at y’all for that.) Rationing toilet paper. That’s so 2020.
That flashback reminded me of an article I read back then on medium.com. In “Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting,” author Julio Vincent Gambuto wrote: “ … as the country begins to figure out how we ‘open back up’ and move forward, very powerful forces will try to convince us all to get back to normal. … Billions of dollars will be spent on advertising, messaging, and television and media content to make you feel comfortable again.”
Everything that’s happened since 2020 has been like a smudge on glass. The timeline is so blurred, with a dotting of Covid variants to zap us back into confusion every now and then. It’s like 2021 didn’t even happen — it simply sits somewhere between The Collective Trauma and The Grand Reopening.
In that April 2020 essay, Gambuto also talked about a sort of awakening: “ … what the crisis has given us is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see ourselves and our country in the plainest of views. At no other time, ever in our lives, have we gotten the opportunity to see what would happen if the world simply stopped.
“… If we want to create a better country and a better world for our kids, and if we want to make sure we are even sustainable as a nation and as a democracy, we have to pay attention to how we feel right now.”
I listened closely to how I felt at that time. Took a lot of walks on quiet streets, made all my meals at home, adopted healthier habits, sat with the space and time to process all the big, loud feelings that surfaced. I believe a lot of us paid attention — to our personal lives, our jobs, the media, the healthcare community, the government response. We saw more clearly what was and wasn’t working — careers, relationships, societal structures.
Office meetings were traded for Zooms, birthday parties and graduations for drive-through celebrations — no more hugs or handshakes. As the community sacrificed for the safety of others, solidarity grew. “Stay Home” and “Quaranteam” banners splashed across profile photos. When we weren’t affixed to clocks or schedules, we took up new hobbies, fought for causes, and protested injustices that stood exposed under the spotlight. A magnifying glass was held to the healthcare system, the economy, essential workers, and all the things that made the world tick.
But as we opened back up, we sought those missed comforts, flocking to restaurants, bars, and stores as if we’d been released from solitary confinement. As quickly as the empathy grew, it vanished. Now there were too many customers, not enough employees, longer wait times, product shortages, increased prices — camaraderie exchanged for complaining, selflessness for selfishness.
Now that “quarantine” and “lockdown” are no longer part of our daily language, you’ll still find me pausing on my walks to trace the veins on a fallen leaf. But the background’s noisier now. The grind outside is rougher somehow. Much like a colony of ants whose hill has been disturbed, we’re scrambling, trying to get back to a place — a “normal” — that no longer exists.
As I fold my laundry and glance at the stash of old masks hanging behind the dryer like some relic of the plague, I can’t help but think we’ve all just moved to pretending it never happened.
But it wasn’t just your imagination. We’ve all been lulled back to sleep. As we near a new year, remember how you felt when the world stopped. Let the alarm rouse you. Time to wake up.
