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M
aking it through the day is surviving from one moment to the next, clear of the sheltered false security of fear. Stay away, stay in, and keep your distance — at least six feet away. Wash your hands as often as you can bear while you sing the happy birthday song for 20 seconds. Washing away what you cannot see in hopes it will not be passed along or recycled mysteriously back into the misted air of contagion.
Oh, but spare me.
I now know the weighted heaviness in my chest is covering a painless diamond in my heart, full of hope, for life to ebb calmly backward to my comfortable “normal.” A tense second tells me not to be deluded. Don’t you know you are now incarcerated? At least until the coast is clear and one can run and escape to freedom lost and wanted back.
For real, this minute in deep thoughtless deviation feels like one spent in jail. The bars are my body, mind, house, tent, or shelter. Someone dictates when to go out, the time to buy food, requirements to see the doctor.
Yet those actually in jail or other monitored communities like group homes, halfway houses, and assisted living are more restricted and less able to isolate and avoid that nasty little war- mongering bugger: COVID-19.
Oh, I have no words, except to say, may science smack the air out of you; and with hope, please go away.
