Reconnect: Thoughts on COVID-19

It’s undefinable – the feelings that have swallowed our country whole. Leaving us swollen, clawing at the good. The memories we’ve made are being patched together through screens and stories and text messages. We’re woken every day with a wall f fear, covered in unknown vines, skewed numbers, too little supplies, too many people. A virus has turned us into aliens – shielding our faces from what we love, from the only thing that can make us feel more human than we are – humans, other people, our people, the air around us, the natural world that’s blocked off by yellow caution tape, the threat of fines, shameful looks. With no end in sight, we cling to the good. We return to our bodies, we return to our loved ones, we return to the things that make us feel good, better, loved. All we can do is walk, take our bodies out of the house, carry ourselves down the street, crossing back and forth to avoid people. We stay inside, to keep others safe. TO help the ones we’re most scared to lose, the ones we wake up dreaming about  – desperate for their fates to be retold – the high risk, the elderly, the ones who don’t know that it could happen to them. We stay crippled, no matter the toll it takes on our already fragile sanity. Locked inside, locked inside ourselves and rattling in a world of questions that bounce against our walls and come right back.  I can’t tell you when it’ll end. No one can. But I can tell you that someday we’ll hug each other again. And someday we’ll clink glasses over a nice meal. We’ll stand in crowded rooms and sing to the music we rely on now. Someday we’ll get on planes and stare down at the clouds again, wondering what it was like to be below them, wondering if we’d get to look down at them again. Someday we’ll go shopping for fresh food and not beg for it to be over. Someday we’ll feel our toes in the sand, feel the roots of the earth on mountain trails, feel the rattle of a city subway as it rounds its well-traveled corners, feel your stomach lurch as the chairlift lifts off. We’ll live again, feel alive again. Only if we see the good, and only if we go through the bad and not try to escape it by going to meet a friend for a harmless glass of wine, a single episode, a couple avocados at the store. Let’s be better. Let’s look for the good. Acknowledge the man holding the sign that says “Smile” on the side of the road. Pick up the chalk and write a message for the next walker. Crack the spine of an old book. Reach out to an old friend. Try something new. Reconnect – whatever that word may mean to you. Breathe in the fresher, cleaner air. Let’s lift each other up, and don’t forget to love and don’t forget to smile.