Darcy and Covid

In this post, the always excellent Rudolph Rigger offered this quote from Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice:

My good opinion once lost is lost forever.

This is a stance that I’ve been going back and forth on for the last two-plus years.

Because I refused to take any mRNA injections:

• My (former?) best friend called me a murderer and conspiracy theorist.
• My mother (who is healthy enough to jog four miles every morning) required me to take rapid antigen tests before she’d let me see her, and refused to hug me.
• I am not allowed to attend the Sonata Piano Camp in my home state of Vermont.
• Last year, I was not allowed to attend concerts at the church in my home town, after having played the piano in that same church in a concert the year before.
• In 2021, I was not allowed to attend musical events at the the library where I volunteer, even though I am the owner of the piano that was used in these events.

I’ve mentioned these things before, but I’m not trying to be tedious and whiny. I’m slowly coming to accept the consequences of my choice. What bothers me now is the idea that I should just forget about what happened, as if things were somehow back to normal. But I can’t forget. It’s as if I discovered in 2021 that 90% of my friends and family were actually members of a cult, and somehow I hadn’t noticed before.

So the question now is: should I forgive the people who wrecked a good chunk of my life, and try to be more kind and understanding? That’s certainly a better strategy for one’s mental health that stewing in anger and hatred. I can try to continue be kind to these people. But I longer trust them, in the same way that I wouldn’t trust them if I learned they were Scientologists. And I don’t think I can forgive them without an acknowledgement of wrongdoing on their part.

Last week I got this sense of discomfort in a strong way when I was at a small concert in the town just north of here. There was a very small crowd due to the thunderstorm that was happening at the same time. As a result, half of the audience were prominent members of these two towns, some of whom who had been in charge of my town’s “Covid response team”, and some of whom run musical events in these towns. These were likely the people responsible for censoring my posts about PCR on Front Porch Forum, and excluding unjabbed people from musical gatherings last year. I liked these people before Covid, and still do, but I don’t trust them now. I know that they could very likely turn again into uninformed, fearful mini-tyrants the next time we’re being told by media and politicians to be afraid of some new scary threat.

I realize it probably seems strange to like somebody and not trust them. I feel the same way about some of my family members now, too. The only way I can deal with this strange conflict is to withdraw emotionally from these people. I’m doing the same with the world at large, which is why I now frequently wear a t-shirt with a picture of Mr. Toad and a caption that says, “I’m not ready to return to society.”