by Madinah Ali 

The world has shut down and is fighting against a common enemy and nothing will ever be the same. I have mixed feelings about the entire situation the world is in, it’s surreal. COVID19, a virus that attacks the respiratory system, brings on acute pneumonia causing many deaths and is currently a GLOBAL pandemic, has pointed out and put on display many failures in society and has actually made things clearer than ever. 

People that sat in big offices providing for their families are on the phone at 6:55 AM calling the unemployment office to ask if they were approved for benefits. I watch my neighbors around me frantically checking the mail every day and I wonder if they, too, are looking for their stimulus check, or maybe their food stamps. Young adults are scrambling to get health insurance so that if God forbid, they get sick, they won’t end up bankrupt from medical bills. Days are blurry, and time doesn’t make sense anymore. Everyone is searching for some sort of normalcy to help cope with this life changing moment in history. 

I’m a hairstylist and considered a non-essential employee or in a “non-essential” line of business. Though, if you asked the people of Georgia, I’m just as essential as a doctor (yeah, okay). I’m passionate about my work, about my clients, and what I have built for myself over the years; and in the blink of an eye, the change my industry is going through is hard to watch. Small salons are shutting down for good, I have friends who are looking for other industries to go into, the thought of my clients and I wearing masks, limiting how we interact with each other, it just doesn’t seem right. Will there ever be a double-booked crazy Saturday in the salon again? Will the holidays bring triple the amount of business like it has before? Would we even want that? 

Heavy thoughts with answers that may be hard to hear at the moment, but accepting the change, and letting go of things that are out of my control has granted me a bit more peace. Several industries are changing and all we can do is take it one step at a time together. This doesn’t minimize how heartbreaking it is to watch my country burn. You would think this would move people to elect someone that would do everything in their power to not let this happen again, or to have a system in place that does not focus on helping such a small percentage of people. Where’s the empathy for human life from the leadership albeit giving mixed signals to the public causing mass confusion. I can only hope that people come out of this with a bit more humanity. We all need each other. 

Have you started preparing for life after lockdown? I have not. This virus has shown me that sometimes you can’t prepare. Right now, I’m putting one foot in front of the other, taking one day at a time and thanking God when I wake up that I’m able to BREATHE.