short Costco trip in covid times

i can’t imagine their world. i finally went to Costco today, first time since January. 
just the drive, the atmosphere in general public…i wanted to hold my breathe
and put on an invisibility cloak until i got back home. all the employees had masks on,
but you could smell a level of fear that was not there before.

i remember one airplane flight where our plane got sucked into the tail wind of a plane
near us, and the pilot came on to announce the precariousness of the situation.
All of the sudden you could see people placing their hands together to pray and you
could smell the fear just coming out of everyone’s body in the shared cabin.
i will never forget that sensation of “this is it”.

there was a bit of that feeling in Costco today, some invisible shared fear
within the enclosure of that building.
I could feel the level of anxiety rippling through my body. i thought of the nurse
who committed suicide yesterday. something just struck me today as i held on
tightly to the steering wheel, and looked at the world on this “not very busy street”
in this “rather small city”. I can not even imagine watching death every day,
i can not imagine
putting my life physically on the line, day after day, for the good of the community.
and i wondered…is this the world going forward?
and i could sympathize with the nurse, that perhaps i don’t want to be in this world
- so different and estranged to what i remember.
And now i am home, washed my hands, washing the food i bought, and i will not
go in public at least for another 2 weeks (incubation period) to be safe,
and right now the chemicals of this strange new world are still coursing through me.
Even if i have not yet been exposed to Covid-19, my physiology has been changed.