It’s not just touch, or the lack thereof, it’s feel, too, as in feeling. The permission to have a feeling, or feelings at this time. I catch myself absolutely refusing to feel or acknowledge what I’m feeling, at any given moment. Why on earth would I want to face feeling sheer terror, or anticipatory anxiety, or the overwhelming feeling of my own mortality, or the mortality of the people I love? I wouldn’t, yet running from the feelings doesn’t work, either. I watch a show on TV and if it’s the kind that even talks about feelings or has some touchy, feeling thing going on in it, my own feelings rise just below my chest cavity and I become very aware of trying to hold them down and not let them out.
Out, the place none of us but the essential workers are supposed to go, so why should our feelings? I can’t differentiate. If I’m not allowed out, why should my feelings be? It doesn’t make sense, but with all of the news about deaths and illness, protecting our hands from the virus and keeping droplets out of our mouths and noses, there’s a kind of unspoken fragility, like moving too much or too quickly, will make things break, and letting feelings out will break us, shatter us, collectively. It’s more than trying to be strong, it’s holding my breath, my feelings and anything else in, which might save lives.
Of course, it won’t save lives, but there are so many of those at stake that if it would, it would be worth it. So, it’s more about letting it rise up and rising up in the face of it. Facing it and feeling it and not holding it in.
I meditate, do Tai Chi, Qi Gong, ride my broken spinning bike, try to fix it, ride it again, broken, walk, do aerobics in my backyard, look for work, write, eat, and over, again. Then, finally, I sit in a chair and feel the sun on my face and feel. It’s okay. I sit in a lounge chair, the sun beating down, music playing and feel like I will never leave my backyard. I feel enormously lucky to have a backyard. I feel like I cannot imagine the future, or what it looks like that is different than this. Closing my eyes and then opening and looking out at the mountains, settling into the naked metal chair, its cushion still tucked away in the garage for the winter months, I feel like I lift the “no feel directive” that is pushing down on my lungs and I feel and breathe and it’s allowed.
My friend who has Covid-19 and has had it for over three weeks, texts me that his doctor says he needs to strengthen and optimize his immune system and avoid adding any additional challenges to it. Rest. Hydrate. Sleep. Meditate. Listen to your body in terms of what it’s ready to do, or not to do. Consider yourself hospitalized, but at home. Remain in bed as a patient suffering with respiratory issues. Listen to your body in terms of what it’s ready to do, or not to do, (I adapt this one to feelings, what you’re ready to feel, or not to feel).
Every time I ask him how he’s doing he asks me how I’m doing. I’m fine, just thinking of you. I think I’m fine. I feel fine, when I allow myself to feel. Fine, scared, sad, sick, sorry, frustrated, mad, numb, scared, sick, sad, sorry, frustrated, mad, numb.
But you need to breathe to feel and evidence indicates that the infection can be spread by breathing, sort of, kind of, the infection capable of spreading fifteen feet through the air. So, maybe there is some logic to not feeling. Hold your breath, cover your face with a mask, mask your feelings. We’re putting masks on both literally and figuratively and it’s hard to take them off, to show ourselves, to feel, even when we’re alone.
Sometimes it’s not that I don’t feel, it’s that I feel empty. I think a big part of meditation is to feel that emptiness and sit with it and keep going, because it’s such an uncomfortable feeling to face, you’re supposed to breathe through it and feel it anyway. I don’t feel at peace feeling empty, I crave feeling something else, to feel alive, and I fear the emptiness will take over.
I try on a mask of sorts on my walk this morning. It’s a bandanna. It’s awkward and makes it harder to breathe, so I experiment with it, putting it on when I’m dodging people, and taking it off when the path is clear. I walk up the hill by our house, and then up to the church. I do the stairs at the church, desperately trying to break a sweat and get my lungs to work a bit. Though I felt nothing before, now, I start to feel good. It’s a gorgeous day, warm and breezy and I’ll do two to three more hills before I’m done. I feel like I could walk forever, because it’s one of the things that makes me feel good. That, that little dog Pluto from Canada, a bath, bed and pajamas, a great movie, a good TV series, the sun, a book.
I watch It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and suddenly I don’t have to try to feel, I’m overcome with feeling, crying throughout the whole movie. I was one of those kids who never watched Mister Rogers and on the few occasions when I came upon it accidentally, I would say, “Oh, no!” and quickly change the channel, actually fearing I’d die of boredom. It was the slow pacing, the simple nature of it, the garishness of the puppets, even Mister Roger’s voice, made me uneasy. In the movie, though, juxtaposed with the complexity and goodness of his character, his kindness, it transforms my relationship to it and him. Especially in contrast to the pain and suffering of the writer who is in effect telling the story and in combination with his own sad story and painful family history, it reminds me that it’s all about the story. Life is. It’s the thing that makes me feel, so it stands to reason, when the story is the same every day, with no new hope, no new strategy, not really, it might deplete feeling.
So where, at first, I fear feeling too much, and repressing it, it switches back and forth between too much and nothing. Then I wonder if I feel things about real things like family and psychology and the things that the people and family I talk to share, but I just can’t allow myself to feel anything about the thousands of deaths I hear about, because it feels so senseless. This story doesn’t make sense. Even though we’re all seeing it play out in the news, so much of it seems unreal, sensationalized, the truths hidden. Because how can this actually be happening? I mean we were warned, years ago, and months ago and weeks ago, and yet things are playing out as if this is all a big surprise. Like we didn’t know this could happen and now we don’t know how to stop it from happening.
I watch On the Basis of Sex, about Ruth Bader Ginsberg. I get so inspired to see her fight. I think this is another part of the problem. I’m used to fighting. In real life, when things aren’t going right, I strategize, I figure out a way to problem solve, to help others problem solve, to come up with solutions and fight for things that are important. With this thing, though, we sit on the sidelines watching things implode and staying home seems to be the only action we can really take to create impact. I want to do more, but I’m one of the people whose resources have dwindled down to nothing. If my dad didn’t die and leave me some money, I’d have only unemployment to rely on and I realize how lucky I am to have that. So, it’s a struggle, but not exactly a fight. We hear that others are fighting to find a vaccine, or a treatment. That others are staying up, working tireless hours trying to create a magic serum that will change this horrible course of events. We’re watching people risk their lives every day to take care of the onslaught of sick patients that fill the hospitals and people are working hard to keep people fed, and staying home is the most important thing we can do, but what a passive feeling.
It makes you reflect on life and realize that planning is so much a part of the ongoing experience. It’s usually a juggling act where you’re commuting, working, interacting and almost always looking at what’s next as you navigate conflicts that naturally occur. But with the imperative to stay home and the knowledge that there is no vaccine, no treatment, and an overwhelmed hospital system without the necessary personal protective equipment, it’s hard to fight, or figure out how. It’s really waiting. Waiting for something to change. Waiting for some good news. Waiting for less people to become infected, less deaths, more progress and even amidst the reality of seeing it all, it’s hard to believe this is happening.
Or, it’s not waiting, but doing. Doing what makes sense, connecting through social platforms, finding yourself and others amidst the noise and fear.
Every day we wake up and wish it would go away or would have gone away while we slept. Sometimes we can console each other and other times, we’re too depressed or frustrated to help anyone. When I can reach down and find that goodness inside me, it helps. Sometimes I surrender to the comfort of not having to go anywhere or do anything. I create a routine of coffee, meditation, writing, job search, lunch, walk, weights, bath, pajamas, dinner and bed. People are out there on the battlefields and all I have to do is stay the fuck home.
How lucky I am to have a home, a warm home with food and clothing. All I have to do is recognize that blessing and somehow send my love to all those people out there fighting. The warriors. The soldiers, the people and processes fighting to keep death at bay.
For a while, I kept thinking when will this end, how will it end, but now I don’t. The pieces of the puzzle are starting to fall into place. So many people hunkering down playing with puzzles, while the epidemiologists, the scientists, the innovators try to find a treatment and a vaccine, I realize it will take at least a year till it feels like a true end. It will take until there is a treatment or a vaccine that is readily available and distributable to create something of that thing we used to feel, no matter how illusionary it might have been—that feeling of safe.
It’s strange but per the need to plan, I start to embrace this finish line. Even though it is so much further out than anyone would want or dream, it allows me to look forward, something I’m desperate to do. People want it to end on May 1st, when the shelter in place has been extended to. I want it to end May 1st , or even May 15th. Yet we all know that is not the true finish line, nor is it even close. Schools will not reopen till fall. People are still dying in droves. Sports with spectators have been cancelled for the foreseeable future. When I try to think of it in this way, inching towards an imaginary finish line that bears no logic, it destroys me, but when I allow myself to look out to next spring, next spring, like this time next year, with the warm breeze and everything in bloom, I start to realize, it’s time to build something between now and then. It’s the only choice we have to survive, to make surviving worth it for all the people who didn’t make it and those that won’t. It makes me think of what I’d do if I could do and why I didn’t when I could.
That song, If the World Was Ending, the one that JP Saxe and Julia Michaels do, comes on the radio and that’s what it feels like. The world, the one we once knew is ending. It’s that moment that you let go of all that’s been before it and you give yourself permission for what you want, right now, in this moment. In the song, they’re checking in with each other:
But if the world was ending You'd come over right You'd come over and you'd stay the night Would you love me for the hell of it All our fears would be irrelevant If the world was ending You'd come over right The sky'd be falling while I'd hold you tight No there wouldn't be a reason why We would even have to say goodbye If the world was ending You'd come over right You'd come over, you'd come over, you'd come over right
It’s like that for me. Because the world as we know it is ending and we need to start over in so many ways—economically, socially, spiritually, politically, environmentally. I need to do better to help the world. For all those innocent people that died and had no control over their circumstances. It got them, it slithered under their skin, and into their lungs and infected them and took their lives, violently and without reason. I want to fight for them now from inside my home and of course if I make it to that finish line, I want to fight even harder to make their fight and the fight of the people watching them take their last breath, worth something. Because it will change us, forever, and it should.
So, I think of next spring and all the work I’m doing right now to build a foundation for all that will bloom next Spring. If it’s sooner, that’ll be great, but I don’t want to go to a restaurant with the tables far apart and our server and all of us wearing, plastic gloves and masks and I guess lifting them up to take a sip of wine, or a bite of food? I’m interested in the one we’re going to build back up, not just mine, but all the worlds around us. I’m interested in the people I have yet to meet, the stories I have yet to hear, the lessons I have yet to learn. The world has ended in this crisis. The one we knew, is different, now, and we’re different in it.
When I was acting and we got through opening night, we had lived through a whole lifetime, together, with all its pain and struggle and when the night ended, we were different. We had all been in the trenches, together, and when we held hands and took that first bow, and heard the applause, it sent tingles up and down our spines, because we had fought so hard and pushed through and now, at the first curtain call, we were on the other side of it, where we could go out there, the next night and start discovering new nuances, new moments, new subtle gestures in our becoming.
I’ve decided to keep learning and building and connecting and discovering who I am in all of this and what I want and how I’ll ultimately serve. It’ll be different, but it was so hard, anyway, so I’m giving myself permission to start over and work my ass off so I’m ready by next spring for anything.
Oh, and if things aren’t looking somewhat normal by then, you’ll come over, right?