A Pandemic and My Personal Undoing
(Before reading this, please consider these are my personal thoughts. This is in no way trivializing the absolute devastation we are seeing throughout the world, the utter incompetence demonstrated by elected leaders, or the grief we feel as humanity. I am only writing about the personal loss I felt in leaving my home, losing my job, and returning to my hometown without a fucking clue on what I can do next. With that consideration, I ask that you also keep me in your thoughts, as I am struggling more than I thought I would be. I hope all of you are well, staying safe, and staying healthy.)
My heart exploded. Everything I had worked for, all the feelings I had trusted to be my own found places elsewhere. Scattered and disoriented much like my own brain, the inner workings of my everything seemed to be in areas I could no longer touch or return to.
The changes foisted on us seem to be doorways into grief. Chambers of heartbreak or disappointment or the feeling of a dream deferring to make way for survival. In the grand scheme of the universe, these trivialities are nothing — not even blips of blips — but in our own menial, tiny lives; they can be our very undoing. One thread pulled and the entire garment is in shambles, not even enough to beg a tissue out of the blanket that used to comfort your entire existence.
For two months, the car I spent my life savings on has sat idly, baking in the southern California sun, in front of the apartment building I’m still paying to keep a room in. That room sits without my music playing from my phone while I get ready in the morning, without me crying after rejections from castings, without my midnight thoughts painting the ceiling when I can’t sleep. When I packed up toilet paper and my basic necessities before rushing to the Burbank Airport for a flight back to my hometown and old life, I didn’t know what the future looked like. Before COVID-19, I didn’t know what the future looked like, either, but at least I could make out some shapes.
Like any young girl who has had her heart broken, it is onerous to consider that anyone else could possibly be feeling the way I am feeling at this very moment. Of course, I know that people have and do and will. Of course, I know that I am not alone in this grieving. Still, the things that keep me from rising out of bed in the morning seem personal, if not intimate in the worst way.
Truly I am mourning the death of a girl who I was a mere 10 weeks ago. In some way, it feels like time has suspended, holding its breath at the top of the trapeze while we all wait for the drop, but deep down, we still know it is passing. My skin will not stop aging and the pages of the calendar fall off as they always have.
And I know, I know. Someone will always meet you with an optimism that makes your stomach tighten and surely that has its place in the world, but to bring it to your grieving is an insult, a dismissal of whatever you have lost. As is a reminder of your blessings. No doubt you know you are blessed and no doubt you have counted your blessings forward and backward. It does not negate whatever loss you feel, nor does it bring back the hope you had to bury with a shovel that was given to you.
I’ve told myself that maybe this is the humility I needed. A lugging of possessions back to my hometown, sobbing my eyes into a 737 window (this time with a mask on), while kicking my carry on of an overwhelming feeling of failure under the seat in front of me might eventually prove to be good for my character.
These past two months have been turbulent. For the first few weeks of my uninvited change, I sat alone in my grief and let it wash over me. I sunk into the pain of it all. Thousands are dying, my parents are getting old, and the world has stopped. Dreams have returned to the fantasy they once were, rather than the tangible reality that was in reach. Never mind that unemployment is its own particular hellscape.
It is as certain as the sunrise that I will look back on this time with an appreciation, but right now it sucks pretty fucking bad. I know, just as I have always known, that I’m not alone in this. Along with my heart scattering all over, so did everyone I love. Such is the going rate for any transient city, the people I know and who have become staples in my life did as I did and went back to their hometowns. Maybe they, too, are up at 2 AM typing their heartbreak to no one in particular. And I hope they share my hope that things will get better and that I love them and that I will see them soon, in whatever future that replaced the future that once existed a mere 10 weeks ago when the girl I was ceased to be.
It will get better.
