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'Tis the season to be grieving. Autumn, Samhain, Halloween-we're deep in the time of dying and grieving and communing with the spirits of those already passed. Here in the States, many of us aren't good at grief. We're taught a toxic positivity that makes us hunt for the positive
Just as allowing despair to devour us isn't helpful, neither is refusing to see and feel and acknowledge our grief. These times are forcing us to face our very real powerlessness. To experience what it is to be faced with something that doesn't care about your wishes or desires.
The USA has lost over 220,000 people. If we did one minute of silence for each person we've lost so far, it would take almost 153 days. That's with using every minute of each of those days. That kind of death toll is incomprehensible. And nothing will change it.
We are not even close to done with COVID-19. In fact, most states never actually got over their first wave of the virus. But because so many people are tired of living in this world, they turn to what they can do to try to feel normal, to not feel the powerlessness.
They go to parties, or restaurants, they have endless reasons why their decisions are worthwhile and why other people are being reckless. We're all exhausted and overwhelmed and our government screwed us over from the beginning and they're still screwing us and it's not changing
Even if Biden wins and monumentally changes things the day he takes office, we're not getting out of this hole anytime soon.
And so we must grieve. We must face the reality of our powerlessness. We must mourn all that we have lost and are losing and will lose.
And so we must grieve. We must face the reality of our powerlessness. We must mourn all that we have lost and are losing and will lose.
The person you were before COVID-19 is already dead. Even if there is a time after COVID-19, none of us are going back to what things were, or who we were, before. Your hopes for this year, and almost certainly for next year, are dead too. These are heavy truths. They are truth.
It is hard to sit in our powerlessness. It is hard to face the reality of all we have lost and will lose. And there is no way to be in reality unless we feel these feelings, unless we mourn all that will not be. It is unfair and it is infuriating and it is the only reality.
This is the season for this grief. This is the season to reunite with our shadow. This is the season to honor those who are gone and to face the reality that death is waiting for us all. That none of us are invincible. That a virus is infinitely more powerful than our will.
Death is here with us. It is all around us. It always has been. It's just more visible right now. And it isn't gone just because the bar in your neighborhood has people in it now. It isn't gone because you want your whole family inside together for Thanksgiving.
None of us are invincible. Viruses infect us all; they don't care how moral you think you are or how good your reasons are for going to that big wedding. The first stage of grief is often denial, followed by bargaining. That's where so many of us are caught right now.
And we're caught there because as long as we're in denial and bargaining we don't have to start the hurting. But that pain is what we need. We need to feel this loss, all the way through, so that we can stop pretending it's over. It's not. It won't be. Not for a long time.
So we need to feel that grief. We need to feel that powerlessness. We need to let ourselves hurt and cry and surrender to the grieving that we cannot escape. We need to accept that life is changed, deeply, forever. And that we are in this space of death for a while.
Important fact to add to this: https://twitter.com/ClayHartedGhoul/status/1317693395909922817?s=19
