2020 and the Corona virus, has rocked our world and has completely changed pretty much every aspect of everyday life. In March, when the world shut down in pretty much two days, there was a flood of memes created about the experience.
Once we were all quarantined in our homes, social media became an even bigger way to connect since we could no longer connect in real life. It may seem weird to say, but I found all the memes that were circulating the internet during quarantine rather helpful mentally. A lot of them reflected my own feelings and experience with the shut down, and it made me feel like I wasn't alone, I wasn't the only one feeling that way and I wasn't crazy for having those thoughts and feelings. It was, and still is, very hard to navigate emotions when spending sooooo much time alone. I am an introvert, so I like my alone time, but we are going on 6 months of mostly alone time, and it's really hard to tell if my feelings are crazy and out of control, or if they are a normal way to react to a world wide pandemic and trying to balance being safe, cautious and smart but also still trying to live life. Most of us have never lived through a pandemic before, so we are all trying to figure it out together, and it's kinda messy and it's just hard.
So while I relied on the memes to help me navigate my feelings, some of them were just funny and relatable and helped bring in some laughter into such a confusing and scary time. At some points we all needed to laugh to keep from crying, or in some cases to laugh in between corona crying sessions. Here are a selection of some of the memes I found to be the most relatable, silly or helpful. Lets start with the funny ones:
I found this one extremely relatable.
Zoom meetings became a regular part of life for pretty much everyone. People were using zoom for work, church, parties, school and all kinds of social gatherings. Zoom etiquette is now something we all are learning about.
There were also a lot of memes created to help spread awareness and support of how to keep yourself and everyone around you safe to help slow the spread of the virus and flatten the curve of cases in order to not over whelm the hospitals.
And there were also memes that shared the frustration of people who weren't taking the precautions seriously ...
The US quickly became an epicenter for the virus, and it managed far worse than a lot of countries because people refused to wear masks, because it "violated their rights." Other countries must be shaking their heads at what the US looks like.
There were also plenty of memes, and even snap chat filters, about toilet paper. At the beginning of quarantine, tons of people started panic buying and hoarding certain items, toilet paper being one of the main ones. It was impossible to get toilet paper or paper towels for about 1-2 months.
Bottled water was another item that was flying off the shelves, which was confusing because the virus isn't spread through the water supply and there wasn't any loss of power...
This was my own experience with trying to shop at the beginning of quarantine, the shelves were empty and it was almost impossible to get what I needed. Things were even sold out on Amazon and other online sellers, it was crazy.
But yes, there was always still plenty of vegan items available haha.
About two weeks into quarantine, right when we were finally wrapping our heads around the pandemic and getting somewhat used to quarantine, Utah had the largest earthquake its had in 28 years. I was already short on emotional stability and had little to no nerves left to handle this. It terrified me, but memes like this helped me laugh a little bit through the fear.
Along with all the memes that focused on all the craziness and negative impacts of the pandemic and quarantine, there were equally as many focusing on the good and the positive.
Then there were the memes that were all about Covid-19 feelings, and these were the ones that really helped me feel like I wasn't alone, like I wasn't the only one feeling all the emotions that I was feeling. Even if the people in my family or in my close circle weren't feeling the same things I was, the fact that there was someone out there creating memes expressing exactly how I felt, made me feel like I was doing ok, I wasn't going crazy and that others felt the same way I did.
I really loved this one, because it was so true for my experience and it was so nice to find that someone had found a good way of putting into words. This was the cycle I had in the early days of quarantine, 3 good days of being alright, then came the hell zone, where I wasn't doing alright. And while it's true it never synced up with other people's hell zone, I think that was a good thing, because when I was having a bad day, those around me were in a good place, and could offer love and support. And then when they had their bad days, I was in a good enough place to offer that love and support back. If we all had our bad days or "hell zones" at the same time, we wouldn't have had the emotional capacity to help each other.
This advice is literally how I survived the couple of weeks right after the earthquake. I truly could only focus on the 24 hours in front of me, I could not let myself think or worry about the future or mourn for the normalcy of the past. I had to stay strictly present in the current day in order to function and not completely shut down emotionally, physically and mentally.
I was so relieved when I found this tweet thread, because it explained SO much about why I was feeling the way I was. And it wasn't because I was lazy or a bad person. It was because my body and brain were trying to process so much new information and cope with the trauma of a pandemic and a new way of living.
This was mind blowing for me, because of how true it is. Everyone experienced this differently, it wasn't as hard for some as it was for others, and sometimes it was hard in different ways. I remind myself of this saying often, because it holds true in so many different aspects of life, and is a good reminder that not everyone feels the same as me and that's ok, they are in a different boat, and their experience doesn't have to be the same as mine.
After two months of quarantine, states and communities started to open back up again, and the world looked a little different. Hopefully, all these things are temporary and we can look back and these photos and remember how weird the world was in 2020. But maybe all these things will be our new way of life forever and these photos won't seem as crazy and weird as they do now. But I am hoping for the former ...
Mask signs everywhere
For a while, playgrounds were covered in yellow caution tape and no-one was allowed to play on them. When the caution tape was removed, warning signs were put up.
Every store has markers of where you can stand to safely social distance
Store front windows are covered in all sorts of requirements to be able to shop inside. Store hours were constantly changing, when businesses first starting opening up again, they were open for just a few hours every day, and some offered special hours for just the elderly and immune compromised to help keep them safe, and then they began getting closer and closer to their normal business hours.
My least favorite precaution stores implemented were oneway aisles. I get what they were trying to do, but nobody followed the directions so it was just yet another things to stress about and to judge others on. And if you did follow the directions, shopping became so frustrating, having to go up or down aisles you didn't need just to get to the middle of the aisle you did need but were going the wrong direction. It was a mess.
Grocery stores put up plexiglass partitions at all their checkout counters to minimize contact between their employees and customers.
All sorts of unexpected repercussions of the shutdown started to emerge, such as a national coin shortage because stores started to not accept cash to minimize the circulation of the virus, which then led to a coin shortage.
Masks and hand sanitizer are sold in every kind of store, grocery stores, gas stations, retail stores, etsy shops. Masks are everywhere.
Masks are becoming fashion statements, *groan* *eye roll*
As if dealing with adult acne wasn't hard enough, now we have to deal with ....
Covid-19 is even affecting things online, when googling businesses a Covid-19 alert pops up.
When shopping online, all stores have some sort of Covid-19 update on how it's affecting their business and shipping.
The virus and its dangers are omnipresent in our world. It literally is affecting pretty much every aspect of our lives, and while we are slowly getting back to normal, it's not the same normal we knew before. Hopefully all of these new precautions and routines will be a thing of the past sooner rather than later. Life during a pandemic is weird.
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