For The First Time In Forever
Over the weekend, I took a huge step towards normalcy: for the first time in 15 months, I spent a Pokemon Go Community Day at the zoo with friends the way I’ve dreamed of for the entire pandemic.
You see, Community Day (a monthly event where players gather to hunt for alternately colored “shiny” pokemon) is how I made my first friends in Chicago. On the day I moved, it was a Community Day, and I heard that Lincoln Park Zoo was a good place to go. I went and quickly found dozens of people playing, and they all treated me kindly. I felt right away like I was part of a community - the exact purpose of the event - and that feeling has stayed pretty constant since.
Except during the pandemic, when I was at home with my family. I was in what is colloquially known to players as a “dead zone” - a place with few areas to catch pokemon and almost no one playing - and even with the features that Niantic added to help people in remote areas, I still felt distanced from my friends. I know this feeling hit almost everyone during the pandemic, but it still felt strange to be separated from a group I’d been part of from literally the day I moved to Chicago.
My friendship with the group led to a weekly pokemon trade night to fill a hole in my calendar, plenty of separate hanging-out times to trade pokemon, and eventually to meeting for non-Pokemon Go purposes. I built my beloved D&D group partially from friends I met in this group, and when I got back to Chicago, I was so excited that the next Community Day was for a pokemon everyone was excited about.
Even so, I was wary. There would be a lot of people at the zoo, even though they were only accepting people with timed tickets. I would be looking for crowds rather than fleeing from them. And sure, I would wear a mask, and I’m fully vaccinated, but there was still the fear ingrained into so many of our heads in the last year: what if the very air I breathed would hurt me or someone else?
In the end, I decided to go. I wanted so badly to meet with my friends and reintegrate into the group I missed for the last almost-year when I was at home, and a six-hour walking event was the perfect way to do so. Still, though, I walked to the zoo instead of taking public transportation, stayed distanced to the best of my ability, and only lowered my mask once - to wolf down a small ice cream cone with my coworker.
Once I was at the event, I felt the familiar feeling of obsession creeping in - but this time, it was positive. I wasn’t worried about catching or transmitting COVID, I was worried about how many shiny pokemon I was going to get (46 - my new record!), and I was willing to keep walking for almost the entire six hours to get as many as possible. Just like I try to do in many circumstances, I tried to transfer my worries about going to my first group outing to staying competitive with shiny pokemon.
In the end, I spent time with many friends who I hadn’t seen in a very long time, took my time to get comfortable with a smaller crowd that will hopefully prepare me for larger events when the world starts to open up even more, and felt really, truly normal for the first time in forever.
I see events like Community Day as a way to wean myself out of the pandemic mindset I’ve gotten so used to, and that would have been catastrophic if it happened when I was little. It’s a way to balance what feels personally safe for me with the guidelines from the city of Chicago and the CDC. And most of all, it’s a way to reconnect with the life I loved here before the pandemic, helping me feel less homesick and more like I’m exactly where I belong.
Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.