Sensory Overload

Most of us have been going through a year of Sensory Deprivation and now if we are vaccinated many of us are now going through Sensory Overload.

All of us have changed and in some ways are not who we were one year ago. Even though in life we all change some every year both physically and mentally because our experiences change us this last year brought a whole new level of grief to all of us, especially those of us who lost friends or relatives to the Covid Mess this last year. Though we only lost one good friend who went to Mexico and died there, still it is hard to face this because her partner who is executor of her estate who has been with her for 30 or 40 years is feeling the effects head on. He is a good and strong man so likely he will come through all of this but when I first saw him I didn't recognize him because he had lost so much weight that he didn't look like the same person to me and I told my wife, "That's not Dan!" when I first saw him. But it was.

For people who have lost the love of their lives to Covid this is sort of a never ending nightmare of sorts even if they survive all this. The last time I was traumatized like this was in 1994 when I was going through a particularly awful divorce. Divorce is like your partner dying often. Even though I'm still friends with my first wife, my 2nd wife and I don't usually speak for years at a time which means nothing is really resolved in any useful way between us. In those situations it is like one or both of you died (which is true) because you are no longer the persons you once were together.

So, you grieve for the life and the persons you once were before that you will never see ever again.

So, you become a new person in order to survive as a human being here on earth.

Though I remarried almost immediately and had another daughter my ex mostly remained single but had a few boyfriends along the way. Now she has finally in her 70s settled down with a guy around her age and I don't have to worry about her as much as I did before.

So, what I'm saying here is divorce is a lot like death and the two previous partners are lucky if they can physically survive at all.

But, it is even worse if you lost your significant other to Covid because they didn't have to die at all and likely wouldn't have if Trump had not been president last year.