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How is the coronavirus pandemic affecting your life right now? Tell us about your experiences, feelings, and thoughts.

According to my internal counter, it's day 355 of the pandemic and there are some signs of returning to normalcy. But, returning to normalcy is filled with anxiety for me. I've wanted for so long to do normal things like go to a concert or just the neighborhood bar or sit INSIDE a restaurant for dinner - the thought that these things are possible now fill me with dread. This past week there were multiple announcements - the lifting the of the mask mandate in Texas, Eater LA indicating that indoor dining may begin as early as next week in Los Angeles and Disneyland reopening next month. I should be happy, I should be thrilled. Those are all signs of a NORMAL life. But I'm not. I'm terrified in fact. I am nervous of re-entering society - entering a world that I may not even know what it looks like it anymore. Especially as an unvaccinated person. I look at the world so differently now. I feel distrust of others and what they do in their life. Take for example today - I went out for brunch with two friends. I usually love people watching but while sitting at the restaurant, all I could think about was my proximity with the next person and if they already had coronavirus. I hate being that person. Yet here I find myself. Perhaps I'm struggling the most with the fact that the very same politicians who blew my life up last year - the ones who told me that I shouldn't be closer than six feet, that I should wear a mask and I should not go see loved ones for the holidays are now telling me it's okay to go to a theme park or fly on an airplane or sit inside a restaurant. To be honest, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it. Why is right now different? What has fundamentally changed in the last sixty days to make this permissible? How is today, Saturday, March 6th safer than January 6th? I worry that decisions being made right now are political ones, not public health ones. And I worry that the fallout from these decisions will be horrific. That's the problem with hope - it can be so easily taken away - case in point is 2020.