I’m not sure who I’m writing to. Perhaps to someone else out there that isn’t thriving during this time of pandemic, but hesitates saying so because it could be so much worse for them personally.
It is so much worse in our world. Helicopters in New York hover over a long trench to show us how tragic things are now as wooden caskets filled with unclaimed bodies are stacked on top of each other. I heard there were 700, but numbers are floating everywhere on this horizon so I don’t really know. There was “good news” that not as many people will die, but how can it be “good news” if includes words that anyone has died? Cars are jammed into lines waiting for testing for a virus that threatens our being or maybe to get food to feed their children because there’s not enough at home.
Why do I feel this huge surge of feelings every Monday when our world does not start up again. At first the day is like any other with goals and calls that launch the week. By midday I notice that my insides are tired of being fooled by my actions.
The logical trauma and stress from all of this begins to rise as words from brave nurses, arguing politicians, repetitive newscasters, and concern for my own children swirl in my head. I begin to hear creaking noises in the attic of my mind as my addictive self starts to pace back and forth tossing ideas toward my day like 2020 Mardi Gras beads dirtied by a virus we didn’t know was here, yet.
There’s danger in filling a mind with so much at once.
Each day feels like I’ve been another year around the sun.
As a poet I keep putting words to what feels like the world’s weeping, but I know it’s my own.
Yesterday tears came like little stings to my eyes daring me to deny their freedom. They came for traditions that weren’t happening, tiredness from being trapped, and telling myself that compared to others, how dare I complain?
I’m tired from this.
My human self has no idea how to play pretend this long in a marathon with no end.
This is the weeds. This is that place where we’re so far off road that we say a little prayer for something to begin to look familiar. Trapped. That’s what my insides feel like and I can’t tell them otherwise. There’s something gracious for my heart to say it.
I stop at 5pm each day to be still and sit with our world for 10 minutes. I begin by listening and then offer my pen and patience to whatever comes up.
Yesterday these words meandered through ink onto paper.
Gathered tears hang over me in heavy clouds.
Capacity reached,
Sanity breached,
Waterfalls of melancholy pour
Over my shoulders
Smoothing jagged edges.
Broken dams reclaim denied spaces
As control gives up.
So I sit and wait
Until something better improves today.
Dammed tears smell of angst
From fought back struggles
Amidst the longing to just flow.
My senses just can’t make sense
Of this being human right now
Without path to follow.
Yet, I know deep inside,
The self of my soul knows the way through,
So I yield and
Hear just one word,
‘Endure’.
Endure Defined- to suffer patiently, go on, hold on, experience,
persist, be brave, make the best of, stay, bide, live through
Whatever this is we’re living through. We can’t go back to the way it was even if we tried. We can’t unsee the horrors and the pain. We can’t step back into an economic system where all that was is just waiting for our return. We are forever changed. What happened in scary movies now has us on the movie set as characters playing this out. So whatever this is that the life laboratory is teaching us, I’m listening.