After having laughed in his face over his desire to stock up on masks, hand sanitizer and weeks’ worth of supplies due to the Coronavirus over a month ago...now all of a sudden we are here, with the entire world in a panic and big box stores sold out everywhere. Today I woke up to an old insurance agent friend of mine urging me to get a cancellation policy for my event - after chasing that dragon all day, it appears they already have language exempting cancellations due to Coronavirus. Those fuckers move fast. I also woke up to another friend suspending registration for her event in May and possibly canceling; another one asking if I think she should cancel her spring event, and everywhere everyone talking about canceling all travel for the year. I’m in so much trouble.
Then there’s that fucking AB5, which will wipe out all of my businesses if Coronavirus doesn’t do it first. No movement on that whatsoever. Nobody knows what to do and everyone is panicking.
Then there’s the fucking election tomorrow, which at this point has become some kind of twisted labyrinthine mind fuck. Vote for who you genuinely like? Or strategize who you think everyone else likes, only to discover none of it matters because this country is so fucking racist and ignorant and brainwashed by Fox News that Drumpf is just going to win in a fucking landslide in November anyway because everyone thinks democratic socialism is Mao-level communism. Ok great.
I was so desperate for any kind of consolation today that I actually started summing up our household and patting myself on the back for being such a pioneer woman that we’d survive any quarantine or shortages easily - shit, I know how to live rough! I can bake bread and stretch ingredients and live on lentils - I do that every day anyway! I’m growing my own vegetables, we have tons of citrus trees in full bloom, I have a giant pile of firewood, tons of dried goods, and a gun. We’ll be fine.
Ignoring the fact that if the world really stops to the point that major American cities shut people in their houses for weeks or months at a time...so many people we know will have died at that point and so many businesses and lives will be irreparably ruined, life won’t really be worth living much anyway. No amount of bread flour is going to help that grim reality.
Am I hysterical? Definitely. More than likely things will have calmed down by September and I’ll be able to hold my event; AB5 is so utterly destructive that most of us will probably ignore it and nobody will have the wherewithal to punish us...the election...I don’t see going well. Honestly I have no answer for that one except I won’t be alone in my utter despair come November. Four more years of children in cages, angry protests, women’s and POC’s rights stripped away piece by piece, liberals cannibalizing each other because we have nowhere else to funnel our rage, shitty or non-existent healthcare, environmental apocalypse, smug white assholes in MAGA hats. I just can’t.
Today I actually had the thought that if my kids catch the virus and don’t make it, and Drumpf gets re-elected, I’m just going to take myself out. We had a good run, I at least got some of the advantages of late-stage capitalism, but it’s all downhill from here. I wasn’t appalled by this thought, because I saw it for what it actually was - not real suicidal ideation, but my pattern-seeking brain’s desperate attempt at developing a plan for relief so I can get some vestige of control back in this out-of-control world. Hey, if worse comes to worst, I can always do that. I don’t have to live without my children in a shit hole world; I have a plan for that. The smart women always have a plan.
So, tomorrow we vote, the ultimate hopeful act. It wouldn’t be so painful if I still believed any of it matters. My vote will land on deaf ears - Warren will never get the nomination - and we’ll be left with candidates too boring or too scary to knock out Drumpf. Am I wrong? GOD I hope so. But right now I’m utterly hopeless.
And yet I’ll get up Tuesday, make the kids breakfast, send them off to school, take Bobby to his violin lesson, walk them through their homework, and vote. Because sometimes the illusion of control is better than nothing at all.
Hi!
ReplyDeleteJust a quick info about the corona virus: it is actually not much more leathal than the usual influenza that kills thousands of old and sick people every winter. Especially for children it is usually only a very mild infection, like a cold. So it really is extremely unlikely that your kids or all of your friends will die of it!
Of course, it is causing a lot of economical damage and you are probably right about the election. But at least everyone you love will very, very likely survive. So maybe better take care of your lentil supplies ;-)
Sometimes when I feel the way you do (which is often), I wonder what the hell I was thinking, bringing children into this world. There's no way I can keep them safe or even give them a reasonable chance at happiness as things start to implode around us. Other times, I feel like they're my salvation, my reason to keep on moving and keep my spirits up - just as you noted in your last paragraph. Keep on swimming - and hope you'll feel better soon. (And honestly, about Warren, every single person I have asked says she's their nominee. How can she not be the frontrunner???)
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