We all have been cooped up in our homes for more than a year and a half now. Everyone is just itching to go outside, even just for a few moments, to bask in the sun and remember what every day used to look like. I am not a very physical person; an unwelcome pat on the back makes me uncomfortable. I am, however, fond of greeting my close friends with a hug. To feel their flesh and warmth assures me they really are there, literally and figuratively. Cut to nineteen months into this fresh hell of face shields, plexiglass, and plastic covers separating seats in jeepneys worsened by the humidity and heat of this place. So imagine the horror burdened by the fact that proximity is policed and physical intimacy is virtually forbidden. Suddenly, I can’t be close to the handful of people I call friends. Suddenly I appreciated the privilege of holding someone close.
To hold and hug someone provides a release of “happy” hormones, thus elevating mood and ultimately contributing to mental health- something I’d argue would be of paramount importance to a person’s overall health. Today, hugs and handshakes are replaced by elbow bumps as if the humerus is the most warming part of the human body. But we can’t do anything about it. Safety is, after all, the most pressing concern right now. The focus as of the moment is protecting the young, the elderly, and the sick. Therefore, even at our homes, authorities recommend limiting close contact to help retard the spread of COVID-19 at the most basic functioning unit of society. If one becomes ill, almost everyone follows.
Of all the things this virus has robbed of us, the ability to hold someone close is not the worst thing when lives and livelihoods are taken away. Even still, I can’t imagine being admitted inside an ICU unit, unable to hold your significant other’s hand before the untimely period that ends it all. And this, unfortunately, is the unsettling truth behind those rooms with beeping machines and multiple contraptions dangling towards a patient with COVID-19. For the longest time, we haven’t held the people we love too closely to combat our unseen enemy, and this we do for their sake so that one day we may feel their skin against ours. One day we will no longer worry if the good feeling behind our hugs will be as contagious as the virus ravaging us today.
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