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

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to journal about the pandemic as much as I originally thought I might. This is because my anxiety is so prevalent that I have needed to start avoiding thinking about COVID and its many, devastating effects as much as possible. This week is particularly difficult because my fiancé began to teach in-person at two schools. He teaches over 100 students who have opted for in-person instruction per day at two schools. He is working in buildings that have thousands of students and staff. There have already been positive cases confirmed at both schools, but we have been told that the schools will not close for positive cases. My fiancé and I had a serious conversation about if this job—one that my fiancé can picture himself in for the rest of his career—is worth the risk. In tears, we agreed that it was not. But we cannot afford for him to resign. I could go on at length about my fears, such as how many students attended Labor Day gatherings the day before showing up to my fiancé’s classroom, unaware that they are spreading the virus to their friends and teachers or how the school district is failing its students and staff through its half-measures, ill-preparedness, and general lack of solutions that are real and not erected for the sole purpose of protecting the district in a legal battle. But the main purpose of my journal today is to write down my feelings of helplessness and insignificance. My fiancé and I are doing everything within our power to lower our risk of contracting COVID, but it isn’t enough. We are not safe. We are helpless to properly defend ourselves against an invisible virus that doesn’t discriminate. This is mainly due to the school district’s negligence. Maybe we’ll be the lucky ones. At this point, it’s up to chance to decide our fate. Perhaps the hardest part about all of this is that if we are seriously impacted by COVID, it won’t even matter. If either or both of us are out of work for weeks or months, develop serious complications or health conditions, rack up thousands of dollars in medical debt, have irreparable damage done to our bodies, or, yes, die, our lives will change or end forever, but the masses will go on unscathed. We will become nothing but a tiny blip in the many statistics. The privileged ones won’t bear our struggles. They will continue on, unchanged and unmoved, by human suffering.