This article is published in the number 24-25 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until June 22, 2021
The contemporary world is prey to a neurosis, for now clandestine. For months we have been locked up in front of a computer screen, wearing pajamas and overalls. The lockdown prompted us to cover our faces with a mask. Away from everyone’s eyes and contact. At a time when, thanks to a mass vaccination, the boundary between our apartment and the rest of the world is falling, we should have the clarity to understand that it was an expulsion from Eden: go away, withdraw, the virus kills.
Leaving the house, finally, can and must mean the cancellation of the trauma.
The last weekend brought festive images of family reunions and crowded beaches, restaurants stormed and people on the street happy to the imminent end of an “abnormal” existence in most countries of the Western world. Air! Air! Is everything okay now? No: the return to “real” life, surprise! Not everyone likes it. A clinical psychologist told CNN that many people may still be dealing with the emotional impacts of the pandemic. “After moving from breaking isolation to the overwhelming effort of mass vaccination, the transition to a more normal life may not be that easy for everyone,” said Dr. Jeff Gardere. “We found ourselves in a very safe bubble… And now we’re fumbling. Many people are afraid to go back to work, resume their place at school, meet friends in bars and pizzerias and take off their masks, ”he added. “People suffer from anxiety.” The anxiety to throw away the suit and get dressed, the anxiety to leave the protective home kennel, the anxiety to reappear in society: for many it means returning under the caudine forks of the judgment of others. And suffer.
So for many the “Covid bubble” has become a cage to be happy and the mask has turned into a miraculous “Linus blanket”. Do you remember? The youngest child of the Peanuts company is able to entertain his friend Charlie Brown with philosophical disquisitions, but struggles to part with his cover. In the description that Charles M. Schulz makes of it there is the whole post-Covid: the terror of not being able to face the world without that dirty and threadbare but reassuring piece of cloth, the fear of the unknown, the disorientation in front of the its disappearance.
After all, let’s face it, it will have happened to everyone to feel unable to leave the house where we grew up, to use cigarettes as a sedative, to let go of the historical boyfriend: aren’t these Linus covers that must reassure us about our existence? Whether we like it or not, we are often still many little Linus, afraid of taking a step outside our safety zone, therefore preferring a WhatsApp to a glass of good wine with friends.
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