Portia Faces Life: Social Isolation
I know we have been hit pretty hard by the changes brought on by Covid...Especially for us in the LGBTQ community.
We were told to practice social isolation in order to protect ourselves from this virulent disease, and socially isolate we did! That is why so many gay and trans folks of my generation were triggered! They were getting flashbacks to that dreadful time when our friends were dying daily. You remember , when our community was rocked by what society called the " gay plague ",AIDS. Our community was disproportionately impacted by the HIV/AIDS epidemic and we lost almost an entire fucking generation of what would now be LGBTQ elders because the government WANTED THEM TO DIE ( But that’s a rant for another day & time ). Now, along comes Covid, and once again the fear after seeing so many friends dying because a disease wasn’t taken seriously enough quickly enough.
SOCIAL ISOLATION… if one can truly HATE a term, for me it is that one! LGBTQ older adults were already more likely to be socially isolated. That is for a number of reasons: we are less likely to have partners, we are definitely less likely to have children and grandchildren, and our children are the built-in caregivers in our society. They say 50% of us LGBTQ folk are single. So for us, sheltering in place meant more likely that you were alone, which for a lot of our community members was a real challenge. I have friends who were alone in their homes for weeks, for months, with friends and family dropping off groceries at their front door and staying 6 feet away. And for the ones that did not have people they could rely on to do that kindness, we recruited groups of the younger members of the community to shop and deliver groceries for them. It’s funny …strange funny, not haha funny that until that time I had never really considered just how many gay and trans older adults relied on public transportation! And although I’m no tech whiz, I was shocked by how many of us were unfamiliar with using apps, or zoom, or electronic banking…so we had to deal with that issue. It’s kind of hard to do that when you are trying to teach someone to FaceTime so that you can talk them through how to download an app, so that you can talk them through using the app, ESPECIALLY with people whose hearing has gradually become impaired. So gradually that they were not even aware that it had been.
The frustration led me to what is going to be my next big venture…Tech train the basics to LGBTQ older adults! The most shocking of all the shocking things about Covid, was how depressing the loneliness was when it set in and the things we were missing out on. So many events were gone. Our Tele-A-Friend program helped with some of that lonliness, but not nearly enough, and THAT is something we seriously must do something about.
Hopefully by now, we are well on our way to the other side of this pandemic! Hopefully, we have all been vaccinated and boosted and boosted again. Mask mandates are decreasing and in some places eliminated altogether. And I have seriously been considering resuming our Silver Pride Project Programming. It will come with some risks to be considered…masked or unmasked? Show me your vaccine status or not? Honestly, it’s been keeping me awake at night. We gays have always dealt with risks: The risk in coming out, the risk of getting beat up for revealing who we really are, the risk of getting fired, even kissing could get us arrested. Throughout my lifetime, and of course even before then, LGBTQ men and women learned to assess the risks. Long before AIDS, there was cruising and seeking out sex partners in a world that was totally hostile to us. A wrong move or misplaced trust could bring beatings, arrest, blackmail, leading to the loss of jobs and a carefully cultivated home life…even death. Making the right move brought us intimacy, pleasure, friendship, and, sometimes, love. Just like we learned during the AIDS crisis, it’s really all about risk reduction. As we take strides to prevent the virus from spreading, while maintaining a sense of normality in our lives I realize it will be a struggle… We can do both and live better for our decision. I HOPE!
Til next time…Be Careful…Stay Safe! and as for me, well, I’m going to keep on facing life…head on!