[originally posted on Facebook April 19, 2020]

You Virus Motherf**ker

[Disclaimer — Sometimes people get worried when I share the full extent of my feelings. I think it’s because we mostly don’t. So, this post is a snapshot of me, at the top of this collective corona coaster, when the future looks terrifying and nothing will ever be ok again. There are also times when, on the way down, fear turns to joy and possibility, and I start to enjoy the ride again. But this is the part of me that wants to be seen right now.]

This post isn’t for everyone.

If you’re sheltering happily, alone or with someone(s) you love, if you’re optimistic about the future, or if you just don’t want to see any more pain right now, you might want to move along.

Because this post is just for me. So that I can connect with people who have a felt understanding of my experience, and want to be with me in it together as we witness each other in our collective pain.

Please, no advice or platitudes. I’m a smart cookie. I’m doing all the things I’m supposed to do — sleep, food, meditation, dance, video chats, classes. Does it help? Sometimes, sure. Is it enough? No it is not.

Because right now, I feel anger. Fuck you, Coronavirus. FUCK YOU for ruining the life I had just carefully constructed to meet my needs, after decades of wandering.

Because right now, I feel grief. Relationships will change. How we move through the world will change. Nothing will ever be the same again.

To all of you people who see the possibilities for positive change — Yes, I KNOW. In my head I know that good learnings will come from this suffering. But my heart and body don’t know that at all. They’re very anxious about an unknown future, and sad about a beautiful, lost past.

To all of you who say that some of us, including me, were privileged to have a comfortable, relatively happy past when many people didn’t — Yes, I KNOW. I hope that what comes out of this is a more equal distribution of resources and happiness. But you can’t promise me that will happen, so I don’t know yet if this was worth it.

The longer this goes on, the further away the end seems, and the harder it is to picture what “the end” looks like. You can tell me your vision, but you don’t really know. No one does.

. . .

When I’m in a place of uncertainty, I look to connection with other human beings for grounding, perspective, care. It feels like that’s been taken away. Is it really just me now? I feel confronted by the truth that we are, in the end, unutterably alone.

I’ve got my back. I love me. But me alone is not enough. I need the We. I need to feel connected to the collective. When I’m alone, I feel fragile, no matter how strong I am.

What do I do when the old ways of connecting are not available, and the new ways are not enough? What happens when the present is so intense, it’s all I can feel?

. . .

Since the novelty and excitement of sheltering ended quickly after that first week, it’s been a long few weeks of rationalization, repression, and wallowing — in that order. Then the dam broke, because two friends couldn’t be there for me in the moment and in the way that I needed them to be.

I gave up control. I gave up pretending. And I cried. A lot.

After the tears, I felt quiet. No longer distraught. Peaceful in my body, though my mind didn’t have any more answers than it had before.

That lasted about 12 hours. Then anxiety and scarcity started rising again. And so it goes, up and down.

…

I recently heard this definition of resilience: Resilience is the time it takes to recover from an adverse experience. It doesn’t mean the adverse event doesn’t suck. It doesn’t mean you don’t feel it. So here I am, feeling it.

Fragile.

So fragile that Best Buy closing at 6pm when I arrive at 6:15 is a personal insult from the universe, specifically designed to thwart the only joy I could concoct for myself in that moment (I needed a cord to practice the bass guitar).

So fragile that the failure of a friend to show up for a scheduled video chat, the failure of a friend to tell me they were nearby, the failure of a friend to come hang out with me when and where I needed them, feels like a knife through the heart. It sends me into paroxysms of despair. No matter what my brain says (You have lots of friends who care deeply about you!), my body, with its deeper, more insistent voice, is screaming I AM NOW ALONE AND THIS WILL NEVER END.

. . .

I don’t want to get used to this disconnection. This is not my world. I am NOT OK WITH THIS. So I scream, and I wallow. Then I pick myself up, and I plot and plan — creating a website that connects us to each other through dance and breathwork and authentic relating (coming soon!); working with the Decriminalize Nature to tell stories of psychedelic healing so more people have access to this important medicine. I will plan for a future in which we heal ourselves and each other through plants and the earth and connection.

And if we do come out of this better than before, because you were what we needed to jolt us out of our privileged complacency, I’ll still be a little mad at you, YOU VIRUS MOTHERFUCKER.

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