Face Masks Feel Funny

By Clara H

​As of the current situation in the world, you cannot walk out of your home without any sort of protective gear. I don't know about you but I am not enjoying it. The smell of hand sanitizer is too strong and face masks are uncomfortable. The only way to avoid it is to stay inside away from people, which is not as easy as I initially thought. You need to leave your home at some point to get things like food and medications. ​

Most people are staying at home to avoid getting sick. Well, not me. I'm staying home so I don't have to wear a mask. I don't want to get sick either, but having that kind of thing pushed against my face is a bigger issue for me. I haven't told anyone that. They're probably going to judge me. In their defense, I'm still judging the people who were hogging toilet paper from the beginning of this whole thing. That makes it okay for them to judge me too, right?  

Okay, so every time I use a mask my glasses get fogged up from my warm breath stroking against my nose and mouth. Besides, I can barely breathe when wearing one of those things. Every time I have a mask on I keep having to pull it down for a couple of seconds to get a gasp of air. It's almost the same thing as somebody cupping their hand over my mouth so I can barely make any sound. I'm not sure about you, but I don't want the feeling of someone's hand on the front of my face. I don't even find it comfortable having people touching me on my back or shoulder.

I wonder if anyone has even considered that face masks might be comfortless to people who are sensitive to touch and different kinds of textures. It seems like I'm the only person that feels this way about them. It's not like I've heard others talk about whether or not their masks are comfortable so I can't say. 

I have no solutions to this problem because if I came up with some they probably wouldn't block out any germs from coming in. At that point, I might as well not wear any kind of protection at all which I'm not going to do. 

For some reason, I can't just adjust to them as I would to a t-shirt. At first, I thought that maybe it was because I've never worn them before but then I remembered that I'm the same way with other pieces of clothing. The way certain things feel against my skin is bothersome no matter how long I have it on for. I can't "get used" to them. If I put on a pair of itchy pants, I'm going to be scratching my legs all day long.

Other people aren't the same way. At least as of what I've noticed. Some people joke around with me about how I'm so picky about how I dress, so I assume that they're not. Every once in a while I look at someone and think to myself, "how on earth can you wear that? It makes me uncomfortable just looking at it."

I've been told before that my clothes are boring or that they're ugly. A few months ago someone even had the nerve to ask me if that the reason my clothes don't look nice is that I don't have the money to afford some that are fashionable. I tell them that I don't mind how my clothes look, all I care about is how they feel. Sometimes it's better if I don't say anything when it comes to rude comments. Why do people care so much about how they look, and why do they care so much about how CLARA looks? 

​Now, this article wasn't written to change lives, it was made to change prospectives. I want people to be aware of how certain individuals in our community are affected by the coronavirus. Some things you may not have thought of before, so I hope this got you thinking about how everyone's view on the pandemic is different and everyone should be open to hearing everyone's voices during this time.

Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash