I Will Survive!

I have a strong survival drive. Call it a trauma response. It is.

Don’t get hurt. Don’t get hit. Don’t get chased by yelling, swearing adults. Bad things come of that. I learned this as a kid. I developed strategies that helped me thrive in an environment not suited for the optimal growth of small children, strategies a therapist once told me are not serving me now as an adult—people-pleasing, working hard to earn love (rather than understanding this is something to be freely given), deferring to bully behavior.

Old habits, am I right?

Those who know me know that I am all about the common good. Feed the hungry, house the poor, love a neighbor—hand up AND hand out, rinse and repeat. But if a building is burning, I’m the first one to the door. I’ll figure out a plan to help the others later.

Cue Gloria Gaynor—I WILL SURVIVE!

So when the vaccine came about, I had questions. I wasn’t going to blindly accept this magic elixir concocted by men and women in lab coats with fancy degrees. I’m all about science, but I didn’t want to die. That sounds extreme, but I’m allergic to penicillin and mushroom, both substances which are present in many medications, supplements, multivitamins, and other things they have no business being in. I once burned my face with a beauty mask that contained a mushroom derivative. Now, I’m reading labels and learning all the different words that mean “don’t use this product, you will shit yourself repeatedly.”

As I do when presented with any food or medical item I’m about to take into my body, I took to the computer to find a list, any list, of what might be in this unknown-to-me substance. So many big words—and none of them straight up said “you will vomit your entire innards or swell up like a balloon.”

I couldn’t ask my doctor for help, because … insert a diatribe here on the poor structure of America’s excuse of a healthcare system … I don’t have one.

The decision was difficult. I can’t even pretend to lie about that. News sources told me to get the vaccine for the common good—yeah, okay, but (remember?) I didn’t want to die. And that’s when it clicked—I didn’t want to die. Sure, it’s not pleasant spending a night sleeping on my bathroom floor, hurling my insides from both ends, and big red blotches covering my entire body with a side of “let’s throw in a little breathing difficulty” has never been a look that’s good on me, but even if those things happened, I would be alive. Both situations could easily be managed by those who are trained to do that. What is it that athletes say? A little pain for a little gain?

I’d love to tell you that I got the vaccine because it was the right thing to do. I’d like to look like the humanitarian I believe myself to be.

But the truth is—I got that shot because I didn’t want to die.