Edit Jan 3, 2023. My family have just informed me to tell me that they did actually attend the protest in Ottawa, so I have updated this blog post to reflect that. I was under the understanding they had not gone.
The other day, I found myself scrolling randomly through the social media of my “friends,” watching them post little updates on their lives. People are back to travelling, planting their gardens, baking pies, and showing pictures of new babies or grandchildren.
And I can’t relate to any of it.
My life has not gone “back to normal,” and maybe never will. I am still dealing with the life-changing fall-out of the “pandemic,” and its needless mandates that destroyed my partner’s career, and locked us out of the country.
Looking at the festive holiday feeds has left me feeling like the Little Match Girl in Hans Christen Andersen’s poignant tale, looking in from the outside at a Christmas window full of delicious food, and light, while I vainly try to light match after dwindling match to stay warm.
This shift in society we have experienced in the last three years is so profound, we are beyond divided. Society is schizophrenic.
The unvaccinated have crossed a river from which there is no return
Those of us who did not get vaccinated, who withstood the intense, massive pressure and punishment, those of us who were literally cast out of society because we wanted to ask a few more questions before putting our trust in big for-profit pharma, we have exited that world of “normal” and there is no going back.
There are distinct points in my journey through the Covid era, moments of total awakening. Each time I had one of these moments it had an actual physical feeling that went with it. A feeling in my brain, like an…expansion…I could literally feel that information expanding areas of my mind that had been previously unused, asleep, or empty. The shift in my perception of reality was so extreme, it changed me physiologically.
Moments like realizing major news media platforms I had idolized and loved for most of my adult life were lying. Not just bending the truth, but actually outright lying. That information was being actively censored - and that links I would post would simply disappear within a few days. That there really was a global group of elites who were not only in charge of this, but not HIDING the fact they were doing it.
And that I couldn’t seem to convince anyone this was happening. All my years of building trust, and proving myself as a journalist, and as a friend and family member meant nothing in the onslaught of information from “expert” strangers and a coordinated global propaganda machine.
But as much as it was terrifying to realize we were inexorably being forced into unknown territory as a society, as a species, it was the personal losses of friends and family that left the biggest psychological and emotional marks.
Like when my best friend of 20 years sent me a message saying: “I’m not avoiding you. We all decided as a family to get the shots. We are happy with our compliance. Can we talk about something else now?” Even as I was being locked out of the country, away from my daughter. Away from my mother. Unsure how I would see them again.
Sorry you are unvaccinated, and locked out of society, but can we talk about something else now?
Or when an old friend, and well known Canadian folk music personality started posting Atlantic articles about how the unvaccinated were basically immoral. And then with no irony at all, she would post about saving the wetlands. She had no issue with other people losing bodily autonomy, their jobs and businesses, and human rights, but for god’s sake save the swamps.
Sorry you are unvaccinated, but can you just stop being silly and get vaccinated now? We have more important issues to fight for, like frogs.
Or when the truckers were in Ottawa, and my family living there told me that claimed they went…but here’s how they wrote about it in their Christmas letter:
You may have heard of the occupation of Ottawa by a large horde of truckers last Jan – Feb. They claimed to be protesting mandatory vaccination and other anti-Covid measures of it. Very loud truck horns repeatedly. City centre streets blocked by trucks and the truckers having a big party with bouncy castles, portable saunas, fireworks, open fires. Some had weird ideas about changing the government by somehow using the Senate and the Crown to bypass the Commons but most were content with just inflicting discomfort on the city until the government would change course. The police, too few to risk enforcement against the many non-violent offences, meanwhile just stood/walked around not doing much. Some even let their sympathy for the “protesters” go too far. We felt helpless that the crazies had taken over. Finally, enough police strength was assembled to force them out without serious injuries. After three weeks, they certainly can’t say they had been denied their right to protest.
Sorry you are unvaccinated, but can you please have your protest somewhere more convenient? Or actually, just get vaccinated and stop protesting. Also, check your privilege, you free-dumber.
I said to my family and friends: “You realize I am locked out of the country legally right now, with my ten year old right? I legitimately can’t get to you, if something goes wrong. Do you even care? Why aren’t you fighting for me?”
Why are you not fighting for me?
This to me is the crux of what many of us are feeling.
Why, when they are so busy fighting for the rights of LGBTQ, and black lives, and transvestites, and the environment, and freaking wetlands, WHY are they not fighting for us?
And here is the answer. Because they literally don’t see us.
They can’t see us.
The unvaccinated (and those vaccinated who have woken up), have left the perceived reality of the rest. We have crossed the Rubicon, and there is no going back. We can forgive, but it won’t matter, because society cannot be made whole when we are constantly living in an ambiguous image or a magic eye.
We see the vase, they see the people kissing. They are seeing only dots, while we are calling out: can’t you see it’s a shark? It’s right there!
They literally can’t see us, or hear us. We are simply pounding on the window while the music plays inside their Christmas party of old normal. When they speak of us, they are speaking only of the “us” they remember, and the “them” they have been taught to believe in by the global propaganda machine.
Last night I was at a Solstice party in our current little Mexican town. A woman from my old home-town of Nelson BC sat down beside me, and proceeded to try and explain how her research had shown her that she needed to get the vaccine, and that it hadn’t been a big deal, and she didn’t understand why there were so many expats in Mexico that seemed so angry about the whole thing.
I explained that I was angry because I had been locked out of the country.
And she said: “Well, you weren’t actually locked out though right? You COULD have gone back, you just chose not to.”
And when I tried to explain all the many ways this statement was ignorant and gaslighting, she got up and left the party.
I really wish she hadn’t left. I wish she could have heard my perspective. But I also saw her discomfort in getting some of the pieces of the puzzle (like the fact that the virus was man-made, and the vaccine had caused injury, and not worked to stop spread etc…), but wanting to not ever admit to having been fooled or wrong, or that “normal” ceased to exist the moment medical tyranny took over.
I get it. The world is a much scarier place when you realize that you are just a pawn in a global plan. Easier to pretend those unvaccinated people, well maybe they were right about a bunch of things, but they weren’t persecuted, they HAD a choice.
We are already living in a parallel society
In the Academy of Ideas brilliant video about combatting totalitarianism they talk about creating a parallels society where you simply live outside of the control systems. I contend the unvaccinated (and those vaccinated whom we have convinced to cross the river) are already doing that. That is why there is this surreal unbalance of world view. This schizophrenic society of perception. It’s because by refusing the vaccine, by exciting the societally accepted narrative, we shifted into another reality. One outside of the society we used to inhabit. Even though we are standing right next to a friend or family member, we might as well be outside the glass, trying to stay warm with our last package of matches.
Except when I really look at those friends and family members, the ones who are doing incredible mental gymnastics in their efforts to hold onto the old normal, I realize that WE are the ones inside with the light and warmth, and they are the ones in the cold with the dwindling match supply. We have the chance to build a new way forward, and they have the chance to sit in the cold and dark, eating ze bugs and owning nothing.
There is no way to heal this divide by going back. We cannot go back across the river. We can only leave the bridges intact so that friends and family can come to us if they choose. Reality has split, and the unvaccinated are the wedge. We are already in the parallel society, for better or for worse, and our job is to build our side up, in the image of the world we want, and be open to those that join us when and if they come.
I wish you all the very best of Holidays. I am also attaching a blog post I wrote for one of my favourite clients about trying to survive as a business in the past two years. I think it’s worth a read.
https://nomadshempwear.com/shopping-local-can-save-the-world/
Onwards to 2023, I’m glad you are a part of my parallel society. I’m looking forward to seeing what we create.
This is an amazing article and speaks to my own experience sooo much. Thank you for helping me to clarify some of my own thoughts!! My partner and I are also in Mexico, and our family is back in Canada, with no real idea of why we are not there! Someone posted the article on FB, and I am so glad she did.❤️
Please include me in the Rubicon Tribe...I'm newly moved to PEI from the ravaged Toronto...given I've irrevocably committed to be healthy(as in responsible to my welbeing) and sane in the face of global mind games, coercion, shaming/blaming, irrational justification and rampant sickness...I need people who I can relate to...your piece, just read, was perfectly timed to demonstrate I'm not alone despite my shared matchbox girl sensitivity...I don't want to be inside with crowds pretending all is well so let's party...meanwhile they're shrugging off the regular occurrence of covid in their ranks despite being fully vaxxed and boostered and otherwise drugged to the gills from "totally unrelated diseases and illness"...however, I do feel alone.