elizabethlevett

I was talking with a friend in the park. It’s the only way I ever see anyone. We walk along together until we get hungry enough to pick up some food or coffee. Then we look for a place where it’s warm and quiet to sit at our recommended safe distance before the food or the coffee gets too cold. “I think we’re all going crazy,” he said. “I think I’m really losing it.” We’d passed the boarded up businesses and the tent encampment. We were looking forward to the solace of companionship – the ease only found in a comfortable friendship worn into softness over time like a favorite pair of jeans. I wish we could go a little crazy together like we used to do – get in the car and turn the radio up loud. But we have to see each other outside these days. “You’re okay,” I reassure him. “You’re not losing it. You’re coping with it.”

I thought about it for a minute. I know what he means. If watching and reading the news each day isn’t enough there’s also the process of absorbing all the losses – artists who should still be with us, old cafes and shops that should still be open and thriving, all the things we can’t do. Add in the trauma of seeing so many images of violence, intolerance, suffering – images we can’t un-see. (“What are they doing jamming into that airport?” “Why the hell is she screaming at that little boy? He didn’t take her phone!” “Have you lost your mind?”) And there are those all too vivid nightmares too – a crowded bus that won’t let me get off and everyone around me without a mask. It’s a heady brew. Enough to knock the strongest off our feet now and then.

I’ve read that during the plague in Europe people went crazy. The most straight-laced became depraved, the most broad-minded became completely intolerant and cruel. Some of us go to extremes in our struggle to cope. One friend told me I’m a fool to believe that thousands have died from this contagion. Another stays locked in his house and says we all need to be ready to go to war. It seems impossible to believe in a conspiracy at this point when everyone by now knows someone who has been caught in the cross-hairs of the virus. And still a significant number still do believe. I consider trying to reason with them, try to talk them out of what seems a mania of denial or paranoia. I consider saying, “Sweetie, who could involve every hospital, every research scientist, every coroner, every ambulance driver, every parent, and on and on to participate in a hoax of this scale? And for what possible reason?” But no. No. What would be the point? Besides, I don’t want to lose my sanity worrying about such things – worrying about how many scoffers, warriors, deniers and sentimental fools are swelling the hospitals to capacity. No, no. I have things to do.

I have to be ready to teach – remembering that the vacant apartments just above me are being remodeled by a team of underpaid contractors wielding sledgehammers. I have to return to my safe routine of morning walk, morning coffee, afternoon paperwork, reading emails, maybe even picking up my dumbbells to continue the daily battle with bingo-lady-arm. I’m okay. I’m okay. I just need a warm and quiet place now and then and someone to talk to. We can listen to each other. We can reassure each other that we haven’t lost our minds.