The Feeling of Being Unwanted

Despite my resoundingly positive review of Southern Utah RV Resort, I actually felt compelled to write about the people of Washington County, Utah.

It’s actually pretty difficult to write this, despite how much time I spent dragging people on Twitter for their inability to empathize with other human beings. I’m sure you’ve noticed in some form or another (PODCAST) that I’m very left-wing for an American. That’s an important qualifier because my beliefs are actually pretty center-ist compared to the politics of other countries.

On top of that, I’m bi-racial; Asian and Hispanic. I wasn’t allowed a sense of community growing up. I’ve gone no-contact with my parents and I’ve never really been close with the rest of my family thanks to the way my parents have always operated. Those bridges don’t exist and I don’t have the tools to build them, even if I found the value there. Which I don’t. Despite my father’s most stringent of rules surrounding the severely misquoted “Blood is thicker than water” mantra, I’ve learned that “The Blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb” through my own experiences.

It's not as simple as close-knit family and friend engagements that I enjoy, mind you. Put me in a room full of strangers with at common interest and I’ll measure out who will fit in and play that character. That probably makes me sound like some kind of psychopath but it’s actually pretty common in the neurodivergent population. We like to fit in. I happen to thrive on it.

And I love to interact. And I love to listen. Combined, those things make for a pretty powerful combo. People find me comfortable to talk to… sometimes too comfortable (the woman who revealed her credit score to me still gives me pause) but I think in general people love the idea of dumping their secrets and fears onto a friendly stranger.

The way we’ve lived our lives for the last year has been a special kind of hell for me. I remember my first encounter with a person the moment after the CDC handed down guidelines for face coverings. Just outside of Elephant Butte, New Mexico is Truth or Consequences, a quiet and isolated town with a whole lot of retail in a small strip and… well pretty much nothing else. I was shopping in Walmart with a neck gaiter over my face (masks were in short supply at this point and I was thankful to have anything) and I was already observing the one-way aisle markers because I’m not a complete asshole. Coming down the wrong way was an old woman, probably in her 70s, also completely mask-less.

“You’re going the wrong way down the aisles,” I said, though the gaiter definitely muffled my speech because that’s just your face smashed flat. “I can read. I’m not gonna give in to socialism.” She retorted. I called her an idiot and left.

And this has set off a very complicated relationship with the public in general and my need for human interaction. Thanks to the actions and words of the 45th President of the United States, about half of the people in the US were unwilling to take steps to courteously protect each other from early stages of the pandemic. And because there’s an incredible superiority complex that comes along with the conservative brand of American Exceptionalism, there is no reasoning with these people. There is no logic. There is no compassion.

It bred a lot of disappointment in me. Eventually this would turn into disdain. Worse yet, our scheduled stays in the blue states became cancelled one-by-one, some for Covid and some for wildfires. We would make the decision to circle back through Colorado instead, and we never really get the chance to find out what it’s like to stay in a city where the majority of people are willing to follow guidelines and wear masks. I recall a specific instance in Pagosa Springs, CO, where I watched a young man (eaaaarrrrrrly 20s) pull his mask off of his face in order to sneeze in a public space.

Nothing about this lifestyle is easy. A lot of people really set about making it harder. When the first stimulus checks arrived, people were still gathering in parks because local governments hadn’t gotten around to handing out restrictions yet. And even when they were, they were violated. Some privately, some not-so-privately. On at least one occasion, we arrived at a park where the staff warned us that there were snitches about who were willing to call the police to enforce social distancing.

And the pandemic raged on.

It’s hard to spend your time in the conservative areas of the country when something so present is so directly affecting so many people. Something so easy.

Consideration of others. Caring. Love.

That’s absent from everyone I’ve ever encountered who is a Covid-denier. It’s amazing to listen to the diatribes of people who believe that Covid was just some way for the government to exert control on us, as their favorite president is running the country. We watched New Zealand beat Covid and somehow that wasn’t evidence enough. Prevalent figures who claimed Covid was not real were sidelined or even lost their lives to it. And you still couldn’t get these people to do the most basic thing in the name of decency. In the name of saving lives.

I’m an atheist and I’m often accused of being a sheep because I’m proud to have been vaccinated. Because I wear a mask proudly, knowing that it is the very least I can do when I’m around other people. Ironically, Christians should be proud of being sheep, shouldn’t they? It’s in the Bible.

Hebrews 13:20-21

“Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

I’m an atheist but one thing I took away from my time reading the Bible was that Jesus wanted above all else for us to care for each other. And I don’t see that. And it’s breaking my heart. It’s exhausting.

We keep searching for a new normal. We keep asking when things can go back to the way they were. For Covid, because of those of us who are unwilling to do anything to help anyone else, there will never be a return to normalcy. Covid will continue to be spread among the unprotected and it will continue to mutate and run rampant around people who don’t understand that you shouldn’t have a full vacation with all of the members of your family in the tropics.

But there’s another new normal most of us won’t be able to return to: For a century, we’ve not had the opportunity to make clear the level of depravity required to prevent someone from doing something as simple as putting a piece of cloth on their face to save someone’s life.

And now that I know, I don’t think I’ll ever look at others the same way.