Another entry from CovidStoriesArchive.org. Below is the unedited text of a submission detailing one woman’s experience with mask requirements that have forced her to recall and relive feelings
There are so many reasons to not wear masks and not a single legitimate reason to do so against a virus. Not a one. Why do we allow this madness to continue?
I feel for that woman, and I’m so sorry. Thirty years ago, when I was 10, I had surgery to biopsy a tumor in my leg and place a central line for chemo. When I awoke in the recovery room, they had an oxygen mask on me with the flow turned up so high I literally couldn’t take a breath in. I kept pulling the mask off to ask for my mom, and every time the nurse saw me, she slapped the mask back on, told me I needed it to breathe (no, actually I can’t breathe *with* it), and finally informed me that I wouldn’t be allowed to see my mother unless I left the mask on. I can’t imagine why anyone would do this to a child. It was awful. So yes, every time I put a mask on these days, I have a mini panic attack. Yes, when I have to mask around my child, I cry, because I hate that “masks separating children from parents” is now happening in this generation, that I’m re-enacting that trauma for my own child. And it is why I steadfastly refuse to mask my son, ever. I just won’t do it. I won’t do to him what was done to me.
One thing at the heart of this has been the complete absence of any empathy to anyone who has a difference experience. The claims about this being for other's 'safety' have been a profound fraud.
When I was in fourth grade, my professor father started doing a lot of international consulting. Fir the next thirteen years at least, he was gone at least 50% and sometimes more. My mother was left home with, I her words, “you rotten kids.” She took her frustrations out on my four year younger brother and me. On him, she used a wooden dowel from the hardware store and on me, she used a metal handled fly swatter. Once the flapper fell off, it was just the metal handle on my bare skin. She wore herself out beating on me because I talked back and told her I would tell my dad when he got home. She never tried any of her abuse when he was around. I would get s worked up from crying that I hyperventilated with every episode.
Now add to that hyperventilation proclivity, experiencing hyperventilation when pregnant with two of my four children. Both times when I was about 7-8 months along and due to singing in church. The first time, I was taken outside by several men onto the church lawn until one thought to give his folded hankie to put over my mouth to help reduce the oxygen/carbon dioxide ratio. The second time, I was in the Mormon Los Angeles Temple, among a select group, to “hear the prophet speak. They made us walk up 12 flights of stairs. After all that, at 7.5 months pregnant, and the “opening song,” and I was done for. Spent the entire prophetic speech in a first aid room with a couple of other sickies.
The first time I tried wearing a mask in a grocery store in 2020, the room started to close in, and I started hyperventilating. My husband helped me out or I would have passed out. I now wear Fake Masks one layer when forced to wear one. I still have only a small window of time to get my business done but it is much better than the two layer smother masks. The double Fake Mask looks so real I wore it on a 1.5 hour flight to Las Vegas last summer.
This psycho drama needs to end. Masks don’t work. Masks prevent one’s body from maintaining it’s immune durability. It is time to stop this nonsense. I am now going without and I always look into people’s eyes and smile. Be brave. Start the Tipping Point (thank you, Malcolm Gladwell) wave. Go bare and proud. Courage is contagious. Let’s spread it around.
I'm so very sad to read this. The past couple years I have been unable to help seeing all the masks as a symbol of the silencing before/coincident with abuse. Praying for this precious woman.
There are kids my daughter works with who have had duct tape put over their mouths so that no one would hear them as they were sexually molested. Yet these kids have to wear masks in the classroom in spite of their current caregivers trying to fight this. The school administrators are evil.
If the masks actually worked, I could see wearing them around vulnerable people but cotton masks DON'T WORK. Why is it so hard for the media to report that the virus is way smaller than the weave of a mask and goes right through like a mosquito through a chain link fence? Sigh.
Reading these experiences in the comments strikes a chord with me. There is another aspect which has squeezed me from society whereever masking is prevalent, regardless of mandates. Maybe it is my history with having experienced violence from other humans, or maybe it is my inate sense of human self preservation, but the result is the same. I simply do not feel safe in a situation where I cannot see people’s facial expressions. Normally I can tell so much just by looking at someone. Are they friendly? Grumpy? Sad? Happy? Dangerous? But I can see almost nothing. Unless they are smiling like
in all the ads featuring people wearing masks (but who walks around smiling all day!) they just automatically feel like a threat. Every look is a stare with unknown intentions behind it. So aside from the fact that this whole show is blind to those of us that cannot wear them, even if I could wear one and believed it
would be helpful to this situation, I still cannot be around people who wear them without feeling extremely unsafe...even more so if I have my little one with me.
Thank you everyone for sharing your story, I do think change is on the horizon, we just have to hang in there and do what we can when we can to enable it.
There are so many reasons to not wear masks and not a single legitimate reason to do so against a virus. Not a one. Why do we allow this madness to continue?
I feel for that woman, and I’m so sorry. Thirty years ago, when I was 10, I had surgery to biopsy a tumor in my leg and place a central line for chemo. When I awoke in the recovery room, they had an oxygen mask on me with the flow turned up so high I literally couldn’t take a breath in. I kept pulling the mask off to ask for my mom, and every time the nurse saw me, she slapped the mask back on, told me I needed it to breathe (no, actually I can’t breathe *with* it), and finally informed me that I wouldn’t be allowed to see my mother unless I left the mask on. I can’t imagine why anyone would do this to a child. It was awful. So yes, every time I put a mask on these days, I have a mini panic attack. Yes, when I have to mask around my child, I cry, because I hate that “masks separating children from parents” is now happening in this generation, that I’m re-enacting that trauma for my own child. And it is why I steadfastly refuse to mask my son, ever. I just won’t do it. I won’t do to him what was done to me.
One thing at the heart of this has been the complete absence of any empathy to anyone who has a difference experience. The claims about this being for other's 'safety' have been a profound fraud.
When I was in fourth grade, my professor father started doing a lot of international consulting. Fir the next thirteen years at least, he was gone at least 50% and sometimes more. My mother was left home with, I her words, “you rotten kids.” She took her frustrations out on my four year younger brother and me. On him, she used a wooden dowel from the hardware store and on me, she used a metal handled fly swatter. Once the flapper fell off, it was just the metal handle on my bare skin. She wore herself out beating on me because I talked back and told her I would tell my dad when he got home. She never tried any of her abuse when he was around. I would get s worked up from crying that I hyperventilated with every episode.
Now add to that hyperventilation proclivity, experiencing hyperventilation when pregnant with two of my four children. Both times when I was about 7-8 months along and due to singing in church. The first time, I was taken outside by several men onto the church lawn until one thought to give his folded hankie to put over my mouth to help reduce the oxygen/carbon dioxide ratio. The second time, I was in the Mormon Los Angeles Temple, among a select group, to “hear the prophet speak. They made us walk up 12 flights of stairs. After all that, at 7.5 months pregnant, and the “opening song,” and I was done for. Spent the entire prophetic speech in a first aid room with a couple of other sickies.
The first time I tried wearing a mask in a grocery store in 2020, the room started to close in, and I started hyperventilating. My husband helped me out or I would have passed out. I now wear Fake Masks one layer when forced to wear one. I still have only a small window of time to get my business done but it is much better than the two layer smother masks. The double Fake Mask looks so real I wore it on a 1.5 hour flight to Las Vegas last summer.
This psycho drama needs to end. Masks don’t work. Masks prevent one’s body from maintaining it’s immune durability. It is time to stop this nonsense. I am now going without and I always look into people’s eyes and smile. Be brave. Start the Tipping Point (thank you, Malcolm Gladwell) wave. Go bare and proud. Courage is contagious. Let’s spread it around.
I'm so very sad to read this. The past couple years I have been unable to help seeing all the masks as a symbol of the silencing before/coincident with abuse. Praying for this precious woman.
There are kids my daughter works with who have had duct tape put over their mouths so that no one would hear them as they were sexually molested. Yet these kids have to wear masks in the classroom in spite of their current caregivers trying to fight this. The school administrators are evil.
If the masks actually worked, I could see wearing them around vulnerable people but cotton masks DON'T WORK. Why is it so hard for the media to report that the virus is way smaller than the weave of a mask and goes right through like a mosquito through a chain link fence? Sigh.
This is what a one size fits all policy creates.
Reading these experiences in the comments strikes a chord with me. There is another aspect which has squeezed me from society whereever masking is prevalent, regardless of mandates. Maybe it is my history with having experienced violence from other humans, or maybe it is my inate sense of human self preservation, but the result is the same. I simply do not feel safe in a situation where I cannot see people’s facial expressions. Normally I can tell so much just by looking at someone. Are they friendly? Grumpy? Sad? Happy? Dangerous? But I can see almost nothing. Unless they are smiling like
in all the ads featuring people wearing masks (but who walks around smiling all day!) they just automatically feel like a threat. Every look is a stare with unknown intentions behind it. So aside from the fact that this whole show is blind to those of us that cannot wear them, even if I could wear one and believed it
would be helpful to this situation, I still cannot be around people who wear them without feeling extremely unsafe...even more so if I have my little one with me.
Thank you everyone for sharing your story, I do think change is on the horizon, we just have to hang in there and do what we can when we can to enable it.
Melanie
This is not about a virus. This is about sexual pleasure for psychopaths. Nothing more, nothing less. Viagra for demona.
In Laura Dodsworth's excellent book 'a state of fear', she recounts the story of a woman with a sadly very similar story, who was treated disgracefully by hospital staff. You can also read it on her substack https://lauradodsworth.substack.com/p/nothing-can-cover-my-mouth-its-an