I May Cry Next Time We Hug

No matter what good TV we’ve been binge-watching, which funny memes we’ve laughed over, or how much self-care we’ve practiced, there’s no sugar-coating that this has been a trying and traumatic season.  The global pandemic has claimed the lives of loved ones, filled us with dread over both personal harm and financial loss, and laid bare entrenched inequities that have devastated our most vulnerable households and communities.

As if that wasn’t enough, we’ve been forced into isolation from one another and from the outside world.  Maybe we’ve made up for it by connecting with loved ones and work colleagues via video-conference, but no matter what the platform is, it is an inferior substitute for real human interaction.  Even worse, our worry over how contagious and deadly COVID-19 leaves us hiding behind our masks and nervous about physical proximity.  The few times we are out and about, taking a stroll in our neighborhoods or doing our weekly grocery run, we viscerally tense up when someone approaches us, averting our faces and doing our best to stifle our own sneezes and coughs.  We are social animals, and now we have to avoid human touch, and it is leaving us simultaneously distressed and depressed.

The on-ramp to this crisis may have been sudden, but the off-ramp will likely take time, as we phase in different aspects of normalcy to avoid a flare-up.  But, someday, maybe soon, we’ll be out and about again, and able to circulate and connect and, yes, hug.  And I’m already bracing for the likelihood that that human touch, with all of the affection and assurance and connection that that touch represents, will open a floodgate of emotion.  Grief, emptiness, and pain, to be sure.  Hopefully also relief, affection, and hope, too.  Whatever are the feelings those hugs will release, I look forward to those hugs.