Dear health care professionals
By; Carissa Wiens
Sure, you may be thanking us for doing our best to stay at home for the past several days and for washing our hands so much that no amount of moisturizer can heal them. But you’re the only ones who should be thanked as we sit on our butts watching John Mulany specials on Netflix.
Thank you for working overtime when the emergency room is bursting full of the elderly and the overly paranoid.
Thank you for still taking care of us even though some are stealing medical supplies from the hospital closets when visiting.
Thank you for continuing to fill out our prescriptions of antidepressants, birth control, and painkillers so we can continue on living.
Thank you for being exposed to everything so we don’t have to.
Thank you for cancelling your sunny vacation to stay in cold Canada to work.
Thank you for sacrificing family time for dreary hospital time.
And thank you for serving the community instead of learning new TikTok dances.
Bibliophile problems
By: Nadia Tudhope
I have had an upsettingly tall pile of hardcovers stacked on my desk since Christmas, waiting to be read. The bottom shelf of my bookshelf is slowly transitioning into another to-read pile. I have a place next to my night table reserved for stacks of library books. There are no less than five books on my favourites shelf that I’ve been itching to reread for months. Before the libraries shut down, I was seriously considering stocking up on even more books.
A quarantine with a week off classes would be the perfect time to tear through all these books and cease the tide of teetering piles that threaten to overwhelm my bedroom and drown me in my own hubris, right?
Wrong. Guess how many books I’ve read this week? That’s right: zero. (Okay, one, but it’s less than 300 pages, and it’s taken me an entire week.) Despite the fact that spending hours reading on the porch is a top-priority summer pastime for me, I have spent all my time going on isolation walks, FaceTiming my friends, or hunched over my laptop struggling through homework. If you don’t see me after quarantine, it’s because the books successfully conspired to smother me in my sleep.
Laughing (because we’re scared)
By: Nicholas Ashenhurst-Toews
I’m not very good at being optimistic. I’ve always been the one who assumes the worst is going to happen or that things are going to consistently stay pretty awful. When I am optimistic, it’s the existential, chaotic optimism that is not sustainable and inevitably ends, crashing to stark pessimism. I cannot do that anymore.
I’m taking the coming weeks one overly long day at a time. I’m trying to not let myself get bogged down by intrusive thoughts that my dad is stuck alone in his apartment on the verge of death from not being able to get his prescription and will be eaten by the cat, or that my best friend has ceased to exist. This is an event that is so common in our friendship that he has just come to accept that he’s going to need to reassure me that he is, in fact, alive, well, and not a figment of my imagination.
I use humour to cope with my existential anxieties. Sometimes, just the act of laughter helps remind me that we will get through this one way or another. I laugh because I’m scared. Right now, I’m laughing a lot.
Puppy makeover
By: Andrea Sadowski
Whenever I’m having a bad day, I watch a mini-episode of Queer Eye in which the Fab Five give a makeover to an adoptable dog named Lacey. It is 15 minutes of pure joy.
I am not ashamed to tell you that I am not a fan of Karamo, the “culture expert,” who acts almost as a therapist to the makeover recipients. I feel uncomfortable watching his segments in the show, as it feels like I am sitting in on someone else’s counselling session. However, this doggy’s therapy session with Karamo is all I need to hear on a bad day. Let me share it with you:
“If you ever feel that stress and anxiety of maybe they’re not going to love me, I want you to say this to yourself: ‘I’m a good girl and I deserve love.’”
Everyone please repeat after me:
I’m a good girl and I deserve love.
Andrea Sadowski is working towards her BA in Global Development Studies, with a minor in anthropology and Mennonite studies. When she's not sitting in front of her computer, Andrea enjoys climbing mountains, sleeping outside, cooking delicious plant-based food, talking to animals, and dismantling the patriarchy.