Hello. It’s nearly 11:30pm on a Wednesday night, I’m nowhere near feeling like I’ll sleep anytime soon, and it probably doesn’t even matter if I don’t sleep at all and am tired tomorrow, because I’ll still be here in my house, just as dazed and half-asleep as I’d be if I’d gone to bed at a more reasonable hour.
I don’t really know how to put my feelings about what’s happening into words. To be honest, the reason why I’m not having constant anxiety attacks is probably because I’m straight-up in denial. And acknowledgement of denial is the first step towards achieving something positive, presumably. I don’t know. I don’t know if I care that I don’t know.
I’m sad about Bernie, I’m also sad that it’s fucking Biden that I have to push the button for, I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to but here we are. I just hope he surrounds himself with better people (I have some solid suggestions for VP and assorted cabinet posts) and can learn how to not talk like an idiot.
I’m also just mostly sad that it’s Trump that’s in charge. I mean, look: we all know that he’s a sociopathic narcissist with zero empathy or even basic decency and the fact that he’s still talking about how his press conferences are getting boffo ratings and that 200,000 dead Americans will be seen as a great accomplishment, and that Fox News and every other elected GOP politician will somehow have to swallow that and live with it and accept it and then parrot it and convince their constituents that this was a massive success, really the best thing that could’ve happened to us, and that Trump is Jesus. We know this. It’s just that it’s so goddamned sad that we’re living in a world of pestilence and awfulness and that it’s entirely his fault that shit is so fucking terrible right now.
My wife and I were talking after dinner, after our 7 year old went to bed, about what this is going to be like for him when he’s older; how he’ll remember this time of his life. The closest thing I can imagine would be, like, the eruption of Mt. St. Helens (1980), when I was 5. Both Chernobyl and the Challenger were later, in 1986, and at least the Mets won the World Series to sorta even thing out for a fragile 11 year old. My nightmares of Cold War Armageddon were also probably a bit later in the 80s. For our son, we’ve not really been talking about what’s been going on; we don’t watch the news where he can see it; we try our best to keep him happy and entertained but we don’t want him to have the sort of nightmares that he very well might be having if he were in 5th grade or so. He’s allowed to still be blissfully unaware of what’s going on, and I treasure that, and I’ll do everything I can to keep it that way. I’m sure he’ll end up remembering this time as that weird part of first grade where everybody was stuck at home, but it won’t necessarily be a time of fear.
Which is, again, why I’m considering having another little nightcap before going to bed, because nothing matters. Well, no, that’s not true; being here matters. All of us being here together, apart, matters. We are all going through some crazy shit right now. It’s not just that I know people who are themselves sick, but that I have friends WHO, WHILE IN THE MIDDLE OF ALL THIS CRAZINESS, are also in the middle of divorces; I have friends with dying parents; I personally have crippling debt issues and I have no 100% guarantee that I’ll still have a job at the end of this.
I’m not really sure where I was going with this, but I guess I needed to get it out.
Take care of yourselves, folks. Let’s please make it through this and then rub our hands all over each other’s faces.
Shouts From The Couch 