I’ve been quieter here than I anticipated when I announced my return. Current events and a global pandemic threw all our plans up in the air and laughed. I’ve struggled with knowing exactly what to say. I’m in a very different place than a lot of people.
For one, despite the fact that our family is made up of two medically fragile people and one nursing home administrator, we’re actually really well positioned for this crisis. Bear’s job is more essential than ever and Atti and I have so much experience staying home that I forget sometimes we *can’t* leave the house. Luckily this isn’t a problem because I’m rarely tempted to try. I keep joking that I have been training for this moment for years. I’m a former Mormon raised by preppers, who has OCD so KNOWS how to wash her hands and deal with contamination, and I have a mood disorder so I have a stocked tool kit for coping. Atticus and I have spent the last 6 years dealing with medical crises that included LONG ISOLATED recovery periods. We know exactly what to do.
But I am witnessing what this is like for the rest of you and I’m worried about you all. I keep thinking of ways I can make art and share what I’ve learned. How can I spare you all some of the lessons I had to learn the hard way, and give you something to cope through this hardship? I think I have some answers for that, but not yet.
First comes the grief, and that can’t be rushed. Meaning making is important, but if you jump to easy answers it’s just another method of denial. Before you can find meaning, you have to understand the problem. And you can’t do that without feeling the full weight of it. If you jump straight to “everything happens for a reason” high vibes conscripted positivity, you can’t learn a thing. You’re assigning meaning, not making meaning. To make your suffering mean something, you have to experience the suffering. You can’t shortcut your way back to happiness. You will only be pretending until you can’t hold the act anymore.
Part of the grief we’re all feeling is the disruption in our normal. And here, lovingly, I would sit with your grief and tell it: THERE WAS NEVER A NORMAL. There was never a time when people weren’t getting sick and dying. There was never a time when everyone had enough food, or employment, or safety. There was never a time when our government or employers or educational systems were meeting everyone’s needs. It never existed. You are grieving the illusion.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t grieving to be done. There IS! Humans operate in this world by explaining things to ourselves through stories. And when we discover that one of those stories isn’t true, it is a betrayal. It is a loss of a coping method and requires accepting a new reality. That necessitates grief. But the first step out of the grief is recognizing that it was just a story. It was never something you were entitled to. And then, you get to work fighting for it to become a reality for *everyone* who doesn’t have it.
Normal is how we got here. Where propaganda networks owned by plutocrats spew out toxic fear and lies until our parents are brainwashed. Where people in their childbearing years, caregivers, and disabled people have been begging for work from home options for decades and been called lazy freeloaders. Where immigrants and poor people work in inhumane conditions and are told they should be grateful for the non-living wage, until they become essential services and then we start talking about them like first responders without increasing pay. Where abuse is so normal it’s invisible and talking about the effects mean you are an attention seeking whiner, while the Abuser-in-Chief strips our country for parts while he watches us die.
This didn’t just happen when the Covid-19 virus reached us. This has always been true. It’s just that crisis makes things visible. It strips the false stories away from us because there is too much contrary evidence to ignore.
Eventually we will make good come from this, because that’s the human in us. But first, we need to grieve. Not for the world we’ve lost, but for the truth of the world that we’ve discovered.
