Thankfully the lovely nurse at my GP practice phoned me about my substantially overdue smear test, I explained that although I want to get it done, I both struggle to wear a mask and be around people wearing them due to sensory overwhelm, lip reading and trauma. Nothing in my notes would explicity point towards being exempt, but between me and the DCs, there would be subtle clues dotted around over the past 20+ years.
She took my word for it. I wore a lanyard. She only wore a visor.
I now know that under current circumstances I am both unlikely to die of HPV (cervical cancer) or with HPV.
To some extent I had enough this time last year when it became clear that my increasingly depressed DCs weren't setting foot in school for another 3m, so that was my point for not walking past reasonably accessible playgrounds anymore. There was nothing being gained by being denied the right to play. Then again, ineffective rules like exercising once a day, I ignored early on. I did my runs and took the children out. I went to quiet places. There was no hazard in going out more than once. I made the most of the crumbs of freedom given last summer. I was cautious about higher risk indoor meet-ups even when allowed. By September, I didn't care if we were a couple of children over the rule of 6 on a walk, and the goverment have ammended that one to make it more practical for families. I illegally supervised my child exercising/ playing outdoors with one friend in the winter lockdown. He needed access to another child in those long, tedious months.
I stopped attempting to wear face coverings in January as the panic attacks got nastier and I was reaching the point of my only weekly outing of shopping being a significant psychological battle. It has got easier since. I was reaching the point of strufgling with indoor spaces around people, not out of virus fear but social anxiety. My recent second vaccine was much better than the first because I have built up doing things again and less concerned about the baggage of Covid measures.
There's little space for me to rebel over the aspects of my life that are constrained. I can't organise a road race or ram raid myself into school to forcibly volunteer to help with reading. Likewise illegal weddings/ funerals/ concerts aren't as easy as sneaking extra people into your home (which I have not done)
What I do notice is that the people who are smugly moralising over just a few more weeks tend to be those who aren't sacrificing. Their little lives are business as usual and they are expecting other people and businesses to pay the consequences of more restrictions to keep them "safe". It is also rarely those in a position where the vaccine is of limited benefit and remaining at elevated risk too.