Yo-yo-ing
I yo yo. I go up. I go down. Yesterday I was so down I wonder if I will ever be able to get up off the floor again. An incident happened and I cried over the details of which are too personal to share right now. I will someday, sharing is all we have at this moment. It brings us to humanity.
“Humanity.” I find peace in this word.
Yesterday I snuck out of my quarantine and walked to the grocery store with my friend Art.
The grocery store is one of the few places we are allowed to go in this time of isolation. Both the grocery and the pharmacy are open. The only two places allowed.
Art is a new friend. A neighbor. We texted and agreed to meet to walk - using a safe 1 meter + distance apart - to the grocery store. He’s an American living in Venice and I saw him and burst into tears.
At the grocery store he bought me chocolate with orange peel in it and we ate chocolate. “Women need chocolate” he said. I think he needed it too. I told him, “The hope I find in this coronaviris is that I am seeing the best in people. This virus has the ability to change the world for the better.” He said “History shows us it could bring the best or the worst”. I choose the best. “Me too” he said. He talked of ideas. Of a bright future. Of how we will need to band together when this is over.
Over? Will it be? Covid19 is not the virus. The virus is the financial devastation and loss of jobs that feels like it will kill us. My ex-husband reached out to me this morning and when I said, “I am scared.” He said, “And So what? If we die, we die.” And I said, “Dying is not what I’m afraid of- it’s living.”
Leaving Art I walked home. And not bearing to go back inside my closed doors - yes, I understand I am suppose to stay inside. Don’t lecture me. I couldn’t bear it yesterday and I was cautious. I maintained a safe distance from others. I went to the end of my Calle and I sat alone and thought.
My life will change after this.
Do I even want the same things I wanted 3 weeks ago?
I imagine a cabin the the woods. In the mountains. Sitting by the fire. Writing. Making love in the mornings. Less to-ing and fro-ing. Less doing. More being. It keeps coming back to this. Being. #justbe