Salt Touched

The time has come, you understand to talk of many things…

I’ve been doing a whole lot of thinking lately as to why certain things make me so…angry isn’t even really the right word. Disgusted. Disgusted is a good word.

I warn you, this is not going to be an easy read, and it runs the risk of being divisive. This is going to get…rant-y.

I apologize in advance to those who might have different views than me, and I hope that one day, we may be able to discuss this civilly.

But for now…

Convoys…

And definitions of ‘restrictions’…

And the fact that it has come to this.

There is a new convoy due to flood into the streets of my hometown in the next week. My poor beleaguered city that is only just trying to recover from two years without tourism as the BC Health Authorities try their best to keep us safe – is about to be ‘occupied’ (their words) by a few thousand truckers who don’t like our province’s politics. Never mind that very few of these people are from this province, most of their funding isn’t even Canadian and they really have nothing to do with our provincial government and seem not to care that we voted that way for a reason.

Okay Shaughnessy…breathe..

These people – and their supporters – claim that the handful of provincial mandates we still have in place (which are/were already on track to being lifted if anyone bothered to read the timeline that’s been published for months) – are a violation of the charter of rights and freedoms and basically that ‘no one can tell them what to do’. I fully respect their right to protest but…but..

I wonder how many of these people have really stopped to think about the fact that the restrictions they are protesting are literally: ‘please wear a mask inside so that you don’t breathe quite as much on people in public areas’, and ‘please get vaccinated, and if you don’t get vaccinated, accept that that action will have a consequence’. No one has taken away anyone’s choice, there are simply consequences to those choices. Just like there are consequences to every choice. We are no longer under lock-down, and haven’t been for a very long time actually, the restrictions have been easing fairly quickly and as a result…the numbers are going down.

So…they are complaining about one major restriction and one fairly minor one. That’s it. Just two things.

And this is where I get…irrational.

Because I have to wonder how long these people would survive under actual pandemic restrictions, actual fear with regards to the consequences of breaking those restrictions.

When you have stood at a window and gone “honey, when will they let us go home?” and known that no one can give you an answer….when you have been confined for nearly two months to an area the size of your average college dorm room, unable to leave the premises for 48 hours at all (in some cases not even issued with a key just to make sure you stayed put), and when you are allowed to leave, you are only permitted to do so for set meal-times. When you are forcibly separated from your spouse during that time and so forced to deal alone. When you don’t have access to a consistent method of communication, neither internet nor phone, during that time. When you must submit yourself two twice daily temperature checks (which are mandatory and logged by your employer). When you wake each morning fearing another panic attack and fall asleep each night in tears and cannot reach out to anyone or show weakness to anyone because after all, you’re still a representative.  When you are not allowed outside except for set “fresh air breaks”, and even if you were it’s too hot to stay out for long. When you are cut off from the entire world and cannot even call your family with any reliability. When your hands are so raw and dry from required handwashing (always checked, always monitored), that they are nearly starting to bleed. When you are required to be masked *every moment of every day* except when you are in that little tiny space.  When even a sniffle means that you had to be sent to the doctor and confined completely for weeks. When you have no method of entertainment, or real comfort and very little to keep you sane. When restrictions prevent you from even trying to get home because even your own country treats you like a plague carrier despite the fact that you have never been sick. When you are stranded and cannot even call for supplies and start to worry what happens if you actually run out. When your family is not worried about whether or not you are going to be able to visit for Christmas but are actually frightened that they may never see you again, because it’s a very real possibility that you may die out there.

When you come back from what so many said must have been an ‘easy street isolation’ with so much emotional damage that even two years later you still have flashbacks and cracked pieces that may never completely recover or disappear completely.

When you have lived through that…then we can talk. Then I can respect your opinions on restrictions, and freedoms, and what is and isn’t ‘right’..

Until then…no. No I will not respect your temper tantrums and your honking horns. I will not respect your ‘right’ to blockade small businesses and hold up obnoxious signs.

Because you have no idea what ‘living with restrictions’ really is.

And I really hope you never will.