Here's What Life is Like After The Covid Vaccine

I have spent the last year in my house. I am in a high risk category, and work from home, so I was able to just have food and supplies delivered to my home.

Before I was vaccinated, I hadn’t been inside a store since early March 2020. The closest I’d gotten was a drive-thru window at Starbucks, and even there they hand you your drink inside a mug.

In February, I got my second dose of the covid vaccine, and since then I’ve been living life as a vaccinated person. Let me just say that things are a lot different than they were before.

The first thing I did was go inside a CVS to pick up a prescription. Walking inside a store was surreal, because so much has changed, yet so much is still the same. Just looking at shelves full of discount makeup and cute seasonal stuff as I made my way back to the pharmacy felt wrong.

So wrong.

There’s a lot of that feeling. There are so many unknowns now, that I don’t know if I am supposed to be able to wander the aisles and shop, or should I still be inside getting deliveries? I don’t know. It’s hard not to know what level of precaution and safety you should take, but it’s just part of the every day now.

I immediately went and did the stuff I’d been missing out on for months and months. I got a fresh set of nails, a pedicure, and even lashes.

Lashes really do make everything better.

Every place I’ve been inside, someone was either not wearing a mask, or wearing a mask down around their neck, rendering it completely useless. I don’t really understand this level of just uncaring for other humans. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

I’ve asked friends that have been out the entire pandemic if this is just how things are. Apparently it is. Here in Texas, you’re hard pressed to find a place where everyone is properly wearing a mask.

I went to dinner with one of my dearest friends I hadn’t seen in over a year on Friday night. I assumed there would be social distancing in the restaurant, and that people would be wearing masks to and from their tables.

I was wrong. We were back to back in booths, every table was full, parties of 15-20 people had tables pushed together in the middle of the restaurant, all the seats in the bar were full of people sharing cocktails and laughing.

The hostess even reached out and rubbed my shoulder on the way out.

I wish I hadn’t gone. I don’t know what the protocol is for walking inside a restaurant in the middle of covid and discovering that it is in no way safe. Am I not already taking a risk by being inside the restaurant? So, don’t I deserve whatever it is they’re doing in there.

If I’d wanted to be safe I should have stayed home. But, then didn’t I waste my precious vaccine?

I don’t know, I just don’t know.

Life is much simpler after you’ve been vaccinated, suddenly I don’t view the grocery store as a place I can never go inside– but as soon as I walked in there, I realized that I am completely spoiled by instacart and home delivery now and I don’t really want to go inside anyway.

It’s weird, because I know that I am much more safe now than I was before the vaccine, but I also have been spending a year taking every single precaution to keep myself and my family safe.