Just Me

*Before you read this, I beg of you just one thing: please read it in its entirety.*

My computer is full of documents I feel like I cannot share. Every time I think I’ve said it “right” I second guess myself. I save the words, file them away, and spend the rest of my waking hours wondering how to calm the cyclone of thoughts and emotions inside of me. I feel them swirl in my head. When I swallow them, they get caught in my throat and the saliva builds like I could vomit, but I push them down until they sit, heavy, in the bottom of my stomach. My chest vibrates and my hands shake. My body hurts from the things I’m keeping to myself. Because it’s just not like me.

This is the face of vaccine anxiety. Not a covid-denier or anti-vaxxer—simply, vaccine anxiety. Now please don’t just come at me with facts, figures and stats like anxiety can be reasoned with. Trust me, I’ve tried to help it see the rational side of the argument. Things like, the science, the numbers and the risk vs. reward. Or how about the fact that I’ve been vaccinated my entire life without a single issue. You might think all that would calm the anxiety but it prefers to plug its ears, close its eyes and say “la la la, I can’t hear you” over and over again. 

The first Halloween my daughter could walk was the last Halloween that I could. She took to the neighbourhood for trick-or-treating as a mermaid—accompanied by her brothers: the fisherman and the scuba diver. My mom crocheted her mermaid’s tail out of a bright green yarn and I looped tulle through the bottom of it, giving it a tutu effect. She wore a matching hand-made toque and a purple long-sleeved shirt—because, Canada—with knitted flowers in place of seashells.