Fuck Despair, Make the Coffee
Here’s what I did today, in no particular order:
I woke up. I made coffee. I thought about the end of the world. No reason.
I listened to my son explain the difference between Minecraft and Minecraft Dungeons for tenfinity hours while I waited for the coffee to finish brewing.
I remembered being a kid.
I listened to the news. I listened to music. I listened to more news.
I checked in with people I love in New Orleans and New York and Texas.
I remembered how it felt to drive out of New Orleans, chased by Katrina and hysterical weathermen. I remembered my husband’s roommate who stayed. He said, “I tried to get to the Superdome when the water reached the countertops.”
I remembered how it felt to take a pregnancy test when I was in college. I remembered.
I baked cinnamon rolls for breakfast. No, I didn’t bake them from scratch. But I popped the can from scratch and they were delicious.
I cried in the car wash. I remembered crying on the 4 train. I remembered floodwater pouring down the stairs into the underground tunnels.
I remembered the Planned Parenthood on Bleecker, the bulletproof glass, foggy with millions of tiny scratches. I remembered how it felt to be foggy with a lifetime of tiny scratches.
I yelled at Chicken all morning, then asked him how he was feeling. He pantomimed talking, his mouth opening and closing in near-silence while he gestured wildly. I asked, “Do you feel I can’t hear you?”
He said, “How did you know?”
I said, “You just told me. Can I apologize to you?”
He said, “Not yet.”
I packed a snack for the carpool pickup: Zucchini bread and cantaloupe. The zucchini bread was store-bought and home-sliced and it was delicious.
I upheld the order of my day. I pressed the walls of the home to standing again, and I filled the space inside it with clean laundry. No, it’s not folded. What am I, a superhero?
I gave $5 to a guy with a sign. I remembered when somebody laughed at me on Nextdoor - “That guy?? He has a van! You got scammed.”
I walked the boys up to school as far as I could go. I gave high fives and “have a great days” to seven kids I knew and then I watched them all run across the weathered blacktop past indefatigable blossoming weeds that burst through the cracks. All these masked kids, jostling their way through the world. Unspeakable blessings.
I made an appointment to get my IUD replaced.
I thought about how for the past two years I’ve heard people talking about trauma and I thought everyone was talking about the real-time trauma, how we all had to process “TODAY’S SPECIAL: More Trauma!” or defer processing that trauma, depending on how much shit was hitting which fans.
And I missed something really important: When the world ground to a halt, so did the noise and busyness that distracted me from dealing with the shit I didn’t want to deal with—old shit, crusty shit, the shit nobody wants to fucking talk about, the shit I can’t even make myself say in therapy because I’m sick (or scared) to death of my own voice. Suddenly, I had nowhere else to look.
So over this season of chaos and boredom and total uncertainty I’ve also been looking, really looking, for the first time in my life, at the things that I don’t want to look at but now can’t look away from, and my stomach fucking hurts.
I bought a slab of cake. I shan’t be sharing it with the children and Ryan knows better than to even ask.
I heard the argument to give up: the world’s on fire, the world’s underwater, the world’s killing itself with horse paste and wild bullets, the world’s doing backflips into sewage, the world’s been intubated, the world’s heartbeat remains undetectable, the world is dead and dying.
Then I heard the part I wasn’t supposed to hear: that I don’t really have to worry about any of this. Because I’m safe. I have money, education, birth control, a blue home state, the benefit of the doubt.
I heard the part I wasn’t supposed to hear, which was “Stay close to me, sweetie, and turn off this upsetting news. I’ll take care of you.”
I heard a strong case that I should count myself better than other people. Not luckier. Better. Not more privileged. Better. And just who the fuck are you? I asked.
I heard the devil’s advocate himself advising despair.
I heard (and remembered from years past), the debate about what constitutes “pro-life,” and I heard (and remembered) people I love disagreeing with me when I said that pregnant people also have lives to pro.
I grieved and feared and worked and fucked up and hurt and panicked and cut zucchini bread.
And I will do it all again.
And again. And again. And again. And again.
Sweetie, I don’t think you realize who you’re dealing with.
Not just me - all of us.
Today I saw my heart was going to break and I said, “Okay, babe, go ahead and break. Let’s do this.” Then I packed the fucking carpool snack. I’ll break my heart again and again and again and again and again, and I’ll still feed the children.
Today I heard, again, that old chorus: “Nobody thinks you’re worth fighting for,” and I cried in the car wash and then I came home and gave to Chef Jose and the Texas Equal Access Fund and laughed at those fools who think human dignity is weather that’ll blow over. I’ll do that shit again and again and again and again and again.
I gave $5 to a man with a sign and I’ll give to him again. And again. And again. And again. And again.
I hurt my child’s feelings and waited to apologize through my tummy ache. Do you think I won’t do that again? And again? AND AGAIN?
I noticed how easy it is to check out because I have the luxury to check out, and I fought that fight. Again.
I noticed how badly you wanted to divide us along the lines of race, class, ability, sexuality, education, even fucking GEOGRAPHY, and I’ll choose our side AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AND AGAIN AND AGAIN.
Don’t let despair convince you to stop laughing at these clowns. They think they won, poor turdburgers. They think their lies will last longer than our spines. They don’t know what they just started. Again.
Don’t let despair convince you you’re a failure. Are you kidding me? LOOK at what you did today! Look what you’ll do AGAIN!
Don’t let despair convince you to give up. You haven’t yet, kid! You’re still breathing right? Then take that breath again. And again. And again.
Finally, don’t let despair convince you you’re alone. Incapable. Unloved. Right to exclude other people to protect yourself.
Despair fucking lies. And it’s a clown. A butthead clown. Despair is a lying clown face butthead with shit in its teeth and you can tell him I said so.
Wake up. Make the coffee. Feed a child. Make your fucking mistakes. Learn from them. Cry in the car wash. Feel your pain. Give something away. Apologize. Pick a good fight. Crack open your glorious heart.
Then we’ll do it all again. And again.
And again.
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Thanks for reading. Fuck despair! Wake up and make that coffee again!