Today is apparently the day the levy breaks.
Alone in my Seattle apartment as the sun went down, not knowing where to start with packing all of my belongings away, and trying so hard to stay positive in the midst of all of this sheer insanity we’re living through right now... I started crying. Staring at the tiny words and videos in my hand, hearing voices of warning through speakers, I started crying. And I haven’t been able to stop.
Everything right now is ends. Everything is beginnings. And it all exists in this environment that is so powerfully destabilizing that I don’t know how to move forward as though the world isn’t a completely foreign planet right now, as though any sense of normalcy seems feasible, as though attempting continuity in any way has any godforsaken point.
I’ve been white-knuckle-clutching optimism because the idea of stopping to really feel the fear and express the grief makes me worry that I’ll get lost in it, that I’ll lose the things that had recently made me feel most hopeful. I worry I’ll drown in the tears, and I’ll be alone here, isolated in a near silent room, watching the sun go down on all of us in our little window frames, behind our closed doors, wishing to hold and be held while washing our hands obsessively, a six-foot mandated radius between us.
I don't know how to turn it off now. I don't know how to care about what stupid things to put in what stupid boxes. I just don't want to be alone, watching the world shut down via screens, looking out at familiar views now unrecognizable, hearing the audible emptiness of once busy streets below.
The quiet is unsettling.
The distance is unsettling.
The uncertainty of how much isolation for how long is unsettling.
I feel guilty for sharing a hug today, for enjoying a head resting on my shoulder, for feeling the relief of encircling arms and close hearts. My body begged such an innocent expression of care received and returned, and I caved and gave in to that simple, careless, irresponsible act of humanity. And I feel guilty for that.
What a perfectly hurtful way to exist.
I’ve still put none of my stupid things in their stupid boxes. I hate every inanimate thing I own. I’m shifting blame for my loneliness onto them, onto the need to pack, the need to move. I’m shifting the blame of our state of affairs—our mandatory gathering sizes and social distancing and apocalyptic jokes and threats of martial law and the absolute failure of this administration to be anything but indecent and incendiary in these terrifying times—, I’m shifting this blame onto my rugs and dishes and furniture and spices and formal gowns and end tables and microphones and so, so many cables and zip ties and jars of spare change and ballpoint pens with little rabbits on them and keyboards and mouses and packing tape and gum, because I don’t know how to hold something as large as a pandemic in my head. I can’t seem to make it fit. I can’t fathom it.
So. Today is the day the levy breaks.
The sun is down. The sky is dark. My face is caked with tears dried by rage. And my cheerful optimism has diminished with the light.
I’ll start to pack; give me a few minutes, a shot of whiskey, a glass of wine. I’ll put a loud show on a large screen, something about murder because that’s a violence that makes some amount of sense. I’ll maneuver with purpose as though this old plan of mine will work in this new world of ours. "The new normal," a newscaster phrased it tonight: the phrase that let loose the flood gates in the first place. Well, if normal gets to be new, why not me too? I suppose we’ll all get a chance to.
