Someone on Reddit decided to leave a long comment/argument as to how selfish I was being for taking a vacation in the middle of a pandemic. I thought about replying and rebutting their argument, point for point.
But I decided, yanno what? I’m not going to. Let them think I’m an asshole for not replying. Because I’m not going to pour oil on their fire by replying. Because I’m trying to be the bigger (maybe not better, though) person.
And even if it was a normal year, there would always be somebody complaining about SOMETHING. About how if you don’t donate X amount of your annual income to charity, you’re a terrible selfish person. If you don’t do recycle every single thing that goes into the garbage and throw away your food scraps instead of turning them into mulch, you’re a monster. If you shop at certain stores, you’re a horrible person for (insert reasons here). If you vaccinate your child, you’re an idiot. If you medicate your child for ADHD, you’re dooming them for life. If you DON’T medicate your child for ADHD (which we don’t), you’re an awful person and should have your parental rights revoked. If you don’t devote every waking second to your child, you’re selfish. If you DO devote every waking moment to your child, you’re smothering them.
I AM DONE. Fed the heck up. You can’t win for losing because no matter what decision you make, somebody is going to find a reason to criticize you. And I am DONE dealing with that. You wanna criticize me, fine. I’ll read your criticism. I’ll think about it. I might even write about it. But I don’t have any obligation whatsoever to respond to you personally and give you more reason to try and tear me down for my decisions. I am done with being told that I am selfish and not self-sacrificing enough. That if I don’t sacrifice everything–my heart, my soul, my mental health and my body for the good of THE ENTIRE FREAKING WORLD– then I am a heartless, selfish Karen who should be dragged out in the street and shot like a dog.
Because at some point, you have to just say “Enough is e-freaking-nough already.” And I’m at that point.
You can be mad at me all you dingdang want to for going on vacation right now. I know that we will be as careful as we can be, taking every precaution we can to make sure that we are as safe as we can be right now. And that’s all we CAN do. Because chances are, we are going to get forced into a mandatory nationwide lockdown when Joe Biden takes office next month anyway. I don’t know. But what I do know is that I’m going to get to spend time with my family in one of my favorite places on the planet in a few weeks and I am GRATEFUL that we are able to take this trip at all. I know that we are lucky that we can afford a trip like this, when thousands of people are suffering every single day. I know we are lucky that we are allowed to go anywhere at all. I know we have it better than many, maybe even better than most, I don’t know.
But at what point do you say, “It’s ok to be successful. It’s ok to have this life because we have worked our tails off for it and we are extremely lucky to have everything we have.” ? When is it OK to be proud of your success?
I don’t know. Maybe we’re all supposed to be miserable and feel shitty right now. But I’ve been through that all year and I’m TIRED of it. I’m at my breaking point, as is my husband. We are absolutely EXHAUSTED with all the shittiness of this year. So we’re taking some of the happiness that’s been ripped away from us by the state of the world BACK.
Judge all you want. Because I’m done. I have zero craps to give about you being judgemental right now. Maybe in some other decade, I’ll have craps to give and worry abut people judging me for what I do or don’t do. But not right now.