You’re Invited to a Masque

All right everybody, hear me out.  I don’t care what your political affiliation is, what brand of science you believe, or where you get your news.  The fact is that there is a highly contagious virus going around, and its effects are not pretty. Regardless of whether you are in a high risk group, COVID is something you don’t want to get, if anything because you’ll be laid up for an indeterminate amount of time.  It would be like wanting to contract the pneumonic plague.

Like it or not, masks have become a marker of social compliance.  They declare, “I am a law abiding citizen who cares about the common good.” Anyone who doesn’t wear one is swiftly tried, convicted, and hanged in the court of public opinion.  I don’t care whether you believe that they help or harm.  It doesn’t matter anymore.  You’re either going to be fined by the law or crucified on social media.

For some of us, masking up is hard.  There is the 20% of the population who have mask anxieties.  Then there are people like me, for whom masks are an autism spectrum meltdown trigger.  It’s an anxiety attack, a panic attack, overwhelming fear, and morbid embarrassment all rolled together. Don’t ask me why, it just is. The haywire reaction compounds upon itself until I want to throw up.  I steel myself to go to the dentist under normal circumstances because of masks.  Halloween is a nightmare because of masks.  Having a c-section in an operating theatre of 25 masked people was  mind-crushing.  Wearing a mask makes me want to throw up and pass out at the same time.

But I do it.  I fight my very neural wiring and I do it.  I wear the mask, I see the masks, I interact with the eyes above the masks, I even smile with my eyes.  I get back in my car, rip the mask off, and hug my knees for a few minutes to shake off the synaesthetic nausea and visceral mind-ache. It’s exhausting. It sucks.  There’s no end in sight.

If I can do this for my family, and yours, I should be able to expect the same courtesy.