an open letter (to you, specifically

an open letter (to you, specifically) Written by Elaina

I think that it would have been easier if the end of the world as we knew it had been violent. A massive meteor, imperialistic aliens, famished zombies. Maybe, even, if we had been lucky, Yellowstone would have exploded, and we could have had some beautiful sunset days before the ash swallowed us whole.

Anything but this slow, never-ending death. It’s like that scene in the Nutcracker, when the Rat King is stabbed and spends two minutes waltzing across the stage, staggering, flopping, reaching for his henchmice with trembling fingers. God. Just keel over already. Just stay down. We know how this ends.

It ends with us, alone. Made into an island overnight, cast to sea, formed without the loving care of the practiced, intent hands of creation, devoid even of the brutal temperatures and physical pressure of the entire world and ocean above. We woke up one morning, and that was it. The world went to shit and all we got was this half-assed stay at home order.

It ends with feeling like, I call my friends, we play games and laugh, we make meager conversation about the birds at our windows. It ends with feeling like: I changed my shirt but I’ve been wearing the same sweatpants for seven, eight, nine days; like everyone I love is a collection of pixels; like I haven’t spoken to my sister in three months. It ends with feeling like, I’m talking to myself, and we’re all laughing about it.

It ends with me thinking, damn, I wish it had been San Andreas, I wish it had been gamma rays, I wish it had been an army of Megalodons—then, at least, I could complain. Because, now, I’m not really alone, right? I’m fine. (We’re fine, except for the people who are not fine, because they’re dead, or worse, left behind by the dead, but we don’t talk about them. The dead or the not-dead. It’s impolite.) The shore is right there: They’re right there. I close my eyes and we’re Pangea again, almost.

But I wake up anxious, and I miss my people’s ugly faces and sweaty hands and too-loud laughs and pointless, frustrating conflicts that come from being too much in the same space, and I miss being able to walk out of a room and not carry them with me in my pocket, in my heavy heart, and they’re right there, on my little black-screened rectangle of miracle and death, and it ends with feeling like, my island is unmoored, I’m drifting right over the edge of the world. Goodbye!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that I wish that it was worse. I’m just saying, I wish that we couldn’t ignore that it is worse, these pandemic days. We have a stranglehold on normalcy, and

our fingers are mangling its neck beyond repair, our eyes are crossed as we hold it too close to our faces, blotting out all else that there could be. Soon enough we will have squeezed all the life and shape from it, and the only things that will remain will be clay beneath our nails and crescent indents in our palms, and our heads in our hands.

See, the thing about disease is that you cannot see it, and the thing about people is that they are hesitant to believe in what they cannot see. The thing about people, too, is that they are selective about what they see. I think that it would be hard to ignore a zombie. But we didn’t get zombies, we got coronavirus disease, we got two million confirmed deaths and we got a slew of racism, we got concerns about the economy, we got masks and anti-mask protests and quarantine and lazy curfews and essential workers, heroes, human people, that barely break minimum wage, that get sick and die. We got six hundred dollars and no rent control and the inescapable phrase, in these unprecedented times.

It makes me want to laugh, hearing that. It makes me want to scream. Because, really? Haven’t we been warned for years, decades, generations about the fallacies of the American medical system? Haven’t we had global summit after global summit on public health and safety? Haven’t we set up all those committees, sub-committees, ad hoc task forces and oversight boards and, and, and, and. And yet. Here we are. So many pieces of paper, so many worthless words, so much insincere sincerity.

Yeah. Our promises may be empty, but our graves certainly are not.

So, it’s hard to not be angry, these days. It’s not healthy, or so I’m told, to be angry all the time, but come on. What’s left, without anger? Depression and her ugly sister, apathy? Yeah, no thanks. I like feeling things. Call me a masochist, but I don’t want to go back to the sick embrace of numbness.

Sometimes, though, when I’m tired, down in my bones and all the way through my fingertips, when anger slips from my grip, there is something else that is raw and wretched and painful beneath, something not meant for open air. When I’m all out of anger and laughter and lung capacity, it just makes me want to cry. There is so much wrong in this world, and I am one person, and I know there are others like me, just over the horizon, but I am in isolation, I am an island. They are other; I am other, too, and I don’t think that I am kind.

But music soothes the soul, and the sun is warm on my skin, and it’s not all bad, when I look at it like that. It’s hard to be angry, all the way through, like that. If I’m selfish for just a moment.

If I close my eyes, think only of the grass under my palms, the lazy buzz of insects who are unafraid, uncaring, in the kindest possible way, if I breathe deep the salt air and faint scent of petrol, if I lay back and look up and there are fat low clouds, clouds that scrape at the sky, clouds like a scrapbook page, overlapping and overlaying and offering taunting glimpses of blue beyond: It’s not all bad, like that.

And then, when it’s like that, when it’s not all bad, when my lungs are full and my head is clear, I’m glad that it wasn’t Yellowstone. There’s no coming back from that. I think that we can come back from this.

We watched, from the audience, as the Rat King bled out, as his soldiers lifted his twitching body and hurried him out the door. They could have held his hand. They could have caught him before he fell. We rooted for him to hurry up and die: He was the bad guy, and when we know who our bad guys are, it’s easy to want them dead.

But we didn’t know he was the bad guy, it’s just what the program told us. He wasn’t even real—how messed up is it that Clara invented him just to kill him off?—and sure, it’s cleaner, easier, to tie up those loose ends with a nice stabbing or gunshot wound, but it would have been easier, too, if it had been a massive meteor, if it had been quick and inevitable and un-ignorable, if there was no wreckage to pick through, so, fuck easy! We’ve made it this far without easy, and we’ve made it abundantly clear that we don’t know anything at all. It didn’t have to end like that. It doesn’t. Our old world is smoldering, and we can pull kindness from its ribs, we can carve out the rotted and cancerous bits and make space for the phoenix, or for that other thing with feathers.

I’m mixing my metaphors, sorry. There’s a lot to say about rats and fire and hope and islands and apocalypse, and my Venn Diagram of the five is looking a bit like a swimming pool, or a petri dish. There, see? A simile, just for you. Wait, wait, I’ll do you one better. : ) There, see? A smile, just for you.

Alright. Now that we’re all grinning, let’s get to bearing it, yeah? Just the weight of the world, right? Just a bit of heat and pressure and our own careless, tender design. Yeah, we’re islands, now, did you know? We’re not corpses. We’re sanctuary, a sailor’s best friend, a place for the birds to roost. And, sure, we’re in the middle of the ocean, just endless horizon all around, but below, we all hit sand and rock at some point. Nothing settles, out here, and the tectonic plates are still grinding, still angry, but that’s okay. There’s a kind of solidarity in an earthquake, if you keep an ear to the ground for the tremors, if it moves you and you know that it moves us, too. (I shouldn’t speak for everyone. Know that it moves me, too, please.)

You should take a walk, when the shaking becomes bearable. Feel the sun on your back and the sand between your toes (the sand goddamn everywhere, who are we kidding, but that’s part of the charm, isn’t it?), and feel the cold night air wreaking havoc on your throat. Keep an eye out for coconuts—I’m going to float you some, from my island, across the Atlantic—and watch the sky, because the stars are clearer than they’ve ever been and I’m pointing the Arctic terns in your direction.

You should take a walk, if you feel like stretching your legs. I’m sending you a message in a bottle, if you want some company, and I’m shore it will wash up soon (haha!). Not a treasure map (sorry), or a cry for help (really, I promise). Just an, oh, hello. I’m out here, you’re out here. We are apart, yes, but we are not detached, we don’t have to be, and we are our kind.

warmly, Elaina