029B1: Different Holiday Stress

Vincenzo Mother's Day Cake

Metro Manila Community Quarantine - Day 421

Special holidays like Mother's Day are a little trickier to celebrate given the ongoing pandemic. As we had observed a surge in the need for delivery services during previous holidays, I at least made sure to arrange for flower delivery ahead of time and found a vendor that had Sunday delivery options. I had already visited Mom yesterday for her resupply run, so opted to limit visiting again in order to help keep the parents safe. It's sad that keeping one's distance is a possible "gift" of sorts during this pandemic.

Social media was full of a lot of complaints about failed delivery efforts today. That's the challenge of these holidays while in quarantine - more people have come to rely on such options to still keep things "special", which is a good thing since that means they aren't risking going out. But at the same time, it's kind of sad that there are those who still need to be out there risking their health so that we don't have to. 

Discussions related to the pandemic can always get stressful no matter how we approach things. A lot of it comes from stress and fear and frustrations about different aspects of this pandemic. We don't need to go into detail here - we all have something to say about the current situation. It's just the nature of things. And sometimes our emotions make us get carried away with such discussions. Or other times things just get too stressful for others and they just need to disconnect and tune out. And all approaches are more or less valid in their own right with a caveat here or there based on the specific circumstances.

And the current weather isn't helping. I find myself making the painful investment in keeping the air conditioning on throughout the daytime so we don't feel the added stress of the heat. I find myself experiencing different heat-related hot spots that get itchy here and there given my constant need to pace to hit my steps even with the AC on. This is an indulgence, I know, but I have no regrets for taking advantage while we can still afford to do so.

How much longer do we all have to endure this craziness? When are our lives going to back to some semblance of normal? There are really days that I can feel the walls closing in. I miss our friends. I miss having the freedom to go out without feeling like we're venturing out into some scary dystopic world. 

It's all so tiring. But we do our best to keep fighting. We endure. We remain. 

We will rise above all this.

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