I have a confession: since moving back to Texas in May 2022, I have not been a reliable masker. For the majority of the last two years, I mostly pretended that COVID-19 was gone. Yes, I vaccinated and boosted and re-vaccinated. With my more cautious (read: responsible, ethical) friends, I masked, went along with outdoor hangs, tested prior to gathering. Yes, I wore a mask on planes and in airports (mostly; even in this situation, I sometimes succumbed to the hot discomfort of my N95). But in the grocery store, with friends, even at the hospital when I was being treated for a broken leg? Nope. Usually, I didn’t even think about it.

I am embarrassed to admit this. In my case, it is inexcusable behavior—because I know better. I know that COVID-19 is a disease that continues to disable and kill many millions of people. I know that masking is effective harm reduction. I know that masking is community care. So many people I love are high-risk and/or disabled and/or elderly and/or without access to quality healthcare. I have multiple friends who have Long COVID/ME/CFS. I claim to value community care, and yet . . . in the span of two years, I wore a mask maybe ten times.

In the online leftist-ish spaces I inhabit, people regularly post things like: “Why are so many people who claim to care about the most marginalized of us not wearing masks?” The comments/replies are full of understandable frustration and anger at these non-maskers. People are incredulous. They insist that people who don’t mask must not really care about their communities. They’re faking.

This take makes sense to me, but I know it to be false—because I know myself. I am not faking. And, I have failed my community with my poor behavior—behavior that demonstrated a disregard for my neighbors and friends. Again: I have no excuse. But. And.

I have been thinking about my reasons. What are the factors that contributed to my radical shift, from a daily masker when I lived in Toronto to a rarely-ever masker in Texas?

It’s not that I believed the CDC was providing guidelines in the best interest of public health. It’s not that I bought in to the idea that we should all go back to work after five days, even if we were still testing positive. It’s not that I resigned myself to the (false) notion that COVID is “just like the flu” (although it’s not like the flu is a fun experience, either, for anyone but especially for medically vulnerable people). For me, it was—and is—social pressure.

Being the only masked person in a space feels socially uncomfortable—and, in my community, n o b o d y has been masking. (Recently, I went to a service at the Unitarian Universalist church in Austin—so, very likely the most left-leaning, justice-oriented congregation in the state of Texas. There were probably 150 people there; even in that space, I was one of two people wearing a mask.) Putting on a mask can feel like donning a target—perhaps for violence or (more likely, especially for a white woman like me) just for ugly looks or silent judgment.

When I was living in Toronto and watching online as my southern friends were not masking, I thought (and said!), with such a self-righteousness, that they needed to get over themselves and mask. Even if it made them feel weird. Because it was the right thing to do.

It is still the right thing to do. And yet.

Honestly, I think part of it, too, is that being surrounded by unmasked people feels like permission to do the lazy thing. Before this season of my life, I thought of myself as someone who didn’t so easily succumb to laziness, particularly when my values—and other people’s wellbeing, and my own wellbeing—hung in the balance. My poor behavior these last two years has humbled that pristine self-portrait right out of my psyche. Like everyone, I can really suck.

A few months ago, I recommitted to 100% masking in small or crowded spaces (e.g., boutiques, concerts) and anywhere that people have to be—grocery stores, medical offices, pharmacies, mass transit. I have failed a few times, not for lack of effort but for lack of planning; for example, I Ubered to a concert when I realized the parking would be awful but accidentally left my KN95 in my car. But I’ve been trying. It’s not good enough, but it’s an improvement. I give most of the credit to my friends and acquaintances who have continued to advocate and educate, online and in one-on-one conversations. In particular, I’m grateful for the people who have insisted, over and over again, that it is never too late to start masking again. We all make mistakes. We all give in to the cowardly and selfish parts of ourselves sometimes. By saying, “It is never too late to start again,” my friends extend both accountability and grace. I want to be like them.

The other major factor for me, in recommitting to masking, is my yoga practice. Ahimsa (nonviolence) is the first of yoga’s five yamas (moral codes). Disregard for my neighbors is violence, plain and simple. But beyond that—choosing to prioritize social conformity and laziness over my deeply held principles of justice, compassion, and harm reduction? That is not only violence enacted upon others’ bodies but also violence enacted upon my own soul.

Socrates wrote, “It is better to suffer evil than to do it.” If that’s correct, and I believe that it is, then I am the greatest victim of my own violence.

I spent many years enacting violence upon myself, actively and knowingly and intentionally. I starved myself. I cut myself. I cultivated an inner hell that was lush with self-hatred and meanness. And I did all of this within a culture that encouraged it—a culture that said fat people don’t deserve love, that goodness is measured in pounds, inches, grades, dollars, accolades. True, nobody was happy when they saw the self-inflicted scars on my belly, but they couldn’t tell me why it was bad. And as I had benefited (read: suffered) from those same people’s praise and admiration and (loudly expressed) jealousy when my body shrunk into an “acceptable” size, the result of counting grapes and “snacking” on raw spinach dipped in yellow mustard and treating myself with a sugar-free Jello cup, I knew their concern for my shallow razor-blade cuts was hypocritical. They liked when my self-harm made me prettier. They didn’t like when it made me look like a monster.

I neither starve nor cut myself anymore, and I try really hard to make my mind a garden more hospitable to compassion and hope than loathing and despair. I am so lucky that my mom got me into therapy at 14 and that I have since benefited from, give or take, a cumulative nine years of weekly sessions. I am so lucky that I found the fat liberation movement when I was 21. I am so lucky that I have known and learned from so many incredible teachers—in classrooms and in churches, on yoga mats and over Zoom, in therapy sessions and at family gatherings. And still: as lucky as I have been and continue to be, as blessed, I still struggle to keep myself safe from myself.

And, as evidenced by my lack of masking, I struggle to keep others safe from me, too. I am tempted here to go off on the many other ways I fail the beings around me—I still eat seafood, even though I believe killing animals for food is wrong! I’m short-tempered with my family! I withhold from my friends, too scared of vulnerability, thus denying them the closeness I know they want and are owed from me!—but I feel myself veering out of accountability and into self-harm. Again.

Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale.

It’s a never-ending process. Every single day, I both fail and prevail. I long for thinness, and then I make myself lunch. I judge other people and beat myself up for being a hypocrite, and then I put a few extra KN95s in my purse. I subconsciously collect evidence to support my belief in my inherent unlovability, and then I notice and stop. I turn away from the suffering of the world, and then I give myself space to grieve. I let clementines rot on my counter, and then I refill my hummingbird feeder.

Refill your hummingbird feeder. Wear a mask at the drugstore. Buy a locally-grown piece of fruit. Bite into it over the kitchen sink, letting the juices run down your face. Savor it. Thank it. Thank yourself. Join me in trying today to choose nonviolence just one time more than violence. And let’s see what happens.