The Jaguar's Heart 8: Modern Leper
Don’t think I can record this one as audio because I’m not sure I could get through talking about it, so a written post is all I got.
I haven’t talked about it at all, but last year I had a couple of very frightening health episodes involving being masked that made me unable to wear them.
Since then, I have never in my life seen such a constant and visceral demonstration of the cruelty of human beings, and the eagerness with which they default to dehumanizing other people. Never. I had been told all my life by other people, by literature, and by common wisdom that the veneer of civilization is thin and it doesn’t take much scratching to find a monster underneath, but I never knew it in my bones, until I observed how people treat me now.
I don’t go out if I feel even the slightest bit off. I stay away from people—more than six feet. I keep my head lowered. I accept temperature checks and COVID questionnaires without fuss. In short, I do everything short of wearing a mask to respect other people’s needs. I also live in a county where the mask mandate specifically states that medical exemptions must be respected, no one is allowed to ask specifics, and no one is allowed to deny service to anyone based on their inability to wear a mask. I carry a copy of that with me everywhere.
It never matters.
There are times, when someone is yelling at me, that I start to disassociate. The person Othering me comes apart in my vision and the pieces start floating, and all those pieces are yelling at me. The world fragments with them, and I feel l’m in a nightmare where nothing makes sense. It happened to me again, in the eye doctor’s office today, where someone was yelling at me and I was staring at her and trying to understand her, and she was saying that the office had no masks and I would have to go across the street to buy one, and her mouth was moving and I was not present and couldn’t make sense of it. They had taken my temperature when I walked in. They had seemed all right. And now it wasn't all right.
A very nice man in the office took me aside and said he could give me a mask if it would help. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been vaccinated for over a month and they still make me wear this. It makes no sense. But I need this job so I do what they say.”
And I looked at him and that didn’t make sense either. And then I went outside and sat on the concrete step and waited until the disassociation faded, and then made a mental note to find a new eye doctor.
I will never forget how quickly I became a non-entity because of something I couldn’t control. I will never forget the vituperation, and the aggression, and the lack of reason or compassion. I am mindful of the fact that even writing this has made my heart accelerate because I have come to expect that people will think I’m lying about not being able to wear a mask… and I am mentally preparing for that to happen. My health doesn’t matter to other people. Only their ideas about my health matter, and I don't get a say. I get that now.
What a long way we’ve come from the courage of Jesus healing lepers. Now it is considered virtuous to abuse people—sick or not—for their human needs. To shame them without understanding their circumstances. And to drive them from public spaces, declare them anathema, and then feel pride at one’s self-righteousness.
I have learned a lot this past year. I don’t think most people will like the lessons I’ve learned. I certainly don’t.
