I exist to sit in my apartment and listen. Doors slam. Max starts yelling the alphabet outside, unceremoniously starting with the letter C. If the fan is on and the TV is on and if I try very hard not to be able to hear anything, it’s almost as though there isn’t screaming coming through these thin walls. The screen door slides open, slides closed. Sirens pass, though fewer than I’m used to. Doors slam. The neighbor downstairs who coughed through the past fourteen months is quiet now, just as a respiratory pandemic is affecting the whole world. A cat buzzes. A sigh. Doors slam. No one knows where we are going. The future has always been amorphous and unplannable, but never like this. Everything is up in the air. No one knows who they will be. Nothing has ever felt like this. Will we get the privilege of looking back on these days with gratitude to the place we eventually make it to? Or are things only going to get worse, and this will be looked back on as a blessing? I exist to sit in my apartment and fear. There is so much rage hand-in-hand with apathy. There is crushing sorrow strolling beside laughing fits. There is benefit of the doubt tangled up in resentful accusation. I want to be better than this, I think. I am proud of the work that I am doing, I think. I forgive myself, I think. It’s okay to have bad days, I think. I am not doing the best I can but. I am not doing the best I can but. I exist to sit in my apartment and turn over in my head the phrase “things could be worse.” It is not a consolation but it is a comfort. It bobs up in between empty distractions. A wisp of cigarette smoke climbs in through the window, and you can’t help but breathe deeper, and feel gratitude and heartbreak and elation and devastation. I never got that tattoo because I think I will probably never be brave enough to do anything ever in my life, but it still exists within me, this concept. You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness. I am grateful for the happiness of these months. It is so stark against the backdrop of terror, panic, spirals of instability. The joy is so bright. It is unignorable. It rolls over and holds me as I lay in bed. It brushes against my cheek as I give up on crossword puzzles on the patio. It drips down my nose underneath my mask as I walk on the shoulder of the highway. Tears are more often just below the surface than I am comfortable with, but often they are sparked by the absolute positivity that I am where I am supposed to be. That things could be worse, and would be worse, and this life was found by luck and work and choices. That these people, the ones who matter, the ones who don’t slam doors, are the people that I would trust with almost anything. The ones who will call me on the phone even though they know I hate it. The ones who will always return a text, ranging between the most frivolous of sharings and the most devastating of emotional realizations. The ones who are capable of being kind. And maybe we’ll never all be together again, and it will never look the way that it did. But we will find new ways to look. And we will find new ways to be happy and grateful with each other. Grateful that these paths continue to cross even through all of us simply sitting in our apartments and existing because that is the kindest possible action. I’ll send you a picture of my cat. And you’ll send me a picture of your cat. And those pictures of our cats scream louder than anything: I LOVE YOU AND YOU MATTER AND KNOW THAT EVEN THOUGH THE WORLD IS NOT DOING A GOOD JOB OF TELLING YOU THIS THAT IT IS STILL TRUE AND YOUR BEAUTY IS IRREPLACEABLE AND LIFE WOULD BE DARKER WERE IT NOT FOR YOUR EXISTENCE AND I COULD NEVER TELL YOU HOW THANKFUL I AM AND I COULD NOT BE THE PERSON I AM WITHOUT THE PERSON YOU ARE. There could be a morning when we will wake up, and it might be because of a slammed door or the cat demanding acknowledgment, and it might be because the sun is out and we’ve slept enough and the peace is too great to sleep through any longer, and we will reach for the phones that we always reach for automatically and there will be joy in the world. There will be good news for someone and good news for another one and good news for an acquaintance who has quite frankly always been a little bit rude but deserves good news nonetheless. And there will not be a moment that whole day where the crushing spiral of panicked everything descends. That morning could exist. And we will deserve it when it comes.
