Growing up in a..well, rather infamous Los Angeles suburb and having kids my age die of gun violence, I was well acquainted with the notion of “survivors guilt”, even if I didn’t know the term.

The notion is that, while people live and die in sometimes capricious ways, that certain people didn’t deserve to go out like they did, and you realize that you’re still alive and they’re not. It’s akin to being in a war zone and your fellow solider steps on a land mine and here you are, years later, siping on a cup of coffee and it hits you, really hits you, that you’re here and they’re not. And you feel bad. You feel sick about it. Why me? you ask. What fate made it so they can’t be here, but I am?

Over the past few years, people I love have lost people they love to Covid. I’ve lost a dear friend who got some wrong information and paid dearly for it. I’d give anything to have those people here.

It was in this backdrop I went on vacation. In a foreign country.

I enjoyed the time away, and really got to recharge and rest and get warm sun, but I was continuously bugged by this…guilt.

I got to do something millions of people cannot do financially or physically. I got to be vaccinated and test negative, which a large part of the world isn’t. I got to tradel,w hick a lot of people aren’t comfortable with. What makes me special? What makes me the one? I’d gladly wish the joy of being warm during a Chicago winter, the hedonism of strawberry daiquiris on a beach, even the small thrill of having your mask off outdoors.

But that’s not the reality of what we’re collectively going through: a failure of government and a success of people who want to see “the other” dead and disabled. And it’s enraging and tiring and sad and all of those things, but, as long as we’re still here, and loved ones are not, we’ll have that guilt.

Or, I’ll have it, and wonder if I can do anything about it.