Day Three: 6.2.2020
You’ve made it this far. Keep showing up.
Today’s prompt is about living in a changed world, finding ways to live in the changed world:
“I was living in a rainforest. I knew the trees and the frogs, the lush green life. With no warning, I got shoved into the desert. I know this is the desert. So take back your plastic palm trees and your cups of water; quit telling me it’s the same. I know better. I know where I live.”
– Megan Devine, from my collected journals.
How do you live in a landscape so vastly changed world?
Dad,
Fleeing from self… I mentioned above the turmoil of the world. I think back to a year ago just before you died. On this day a year ago I was planting flowers. I have no doubt I was frustrated about some injustice, saddened by some unhappy news, and feeling changes within myself as I moved forward in this new place.
I don’t know that I could’ve described today to you. We have been living social distancing, self-quarantine for 80 days now. Almost a quarter of a year, a few days before my birthday will mark 5 months. Yesterday was my first day going to work in 72 days. My own circumstance has been stressful, 4 weeks with no pay of any kind. Unemployment that covers ¾ of what I was making. Knowing that come July it will cover less that ¼.
We want to buy a house. We want to get married. We want to celebrate anniversaries, birthdays, and milestones. Instead we smile at screens and tell ourselves it’s okay. Watching businesses fail one by one. Watching selfish people endanger others. Watching politicians turn this pandemic into a political game. Trying in vain to find some sense of stability in the midst of all this shit. I fled self.
For three weeks, I slept all day, stayed up all night. Watched TV, ignored texts, and tried not to think about anything. Because thinking about it… taking it in, might break me. Nick and I fought and that alone pulled me back in. It’s been another 25 days. I’m feeling better. I found a part-time job, I started engaging in the world again, I started a research project with Sylvia… I started planning. I stopped running and started paying attention. Just in time to watch the world start burning again.
Things were opening slowly, people were being careful-ish. We had a handle on the curve. We were starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel… the way that we could slowly emerge from our homes, seeing only a few people, and we could do that for another 18 months if we had too. We had plans.
Now, people are on the streets by the thousands across the country, they are rioting, marching, sitting in, and protesting. They have looted, set fires to buildings, and even hurt people. This is in response to a cop kneeling on the neck of a man, for almost 10 minutes, until he died. And three other cops letting him do it. Stopping people from stopping him. It’s all on video. It’s heartbreaking.
It’s been 8 days since that happened. We have had 4 nights of riots and protests here. Last night was the first one that didn’t end in tear gas and arrests. The whole nation is in an uproar and rightfully so. I have spent the last several days trying to find safe ways to advocate and resisting the urge to join them in the streets. And today, after literally hours of pouring over literature and media, finding ways to help and people to call. I find myself exhausted. Being at peace, in a desert, fleeing from self and stuff, and people.
I’m not sure if I know how to live in this new desert yet. I was finally starting to know the desert I was shoved into the day you died, when the virus came along and shoved me into a new one, not all together different, but new just the same. And when I found a way to stand in again. When my heart caught up with my head. When I looked around and new where I was going and what was ahead.
I was shoved into a new desert, and dad I am trying to take this one in stride. Like I did at the beginning of the last one. It feels heavy but oddly comfortable, exhausting but familiar. I’m not sure if I know this desert, or how to live in it. But I think I’m starting to get used to the shove.
You flee self until yourself catches up. And then just keep going, but don’t get comfy because you’re bound to be shoved ahead again in a race for who knows what.
I’m not sure I answered the prompt this time. But I love you. I miss you.
Good night.
Cassie
Coffee & Conundrums 