Day 23 of quarantine

“Help!”… and how are you doing this week? I’m thinking of you, irritated that I don’t know when I will ever see you again.

I hope that you are staying safe and healthy. This week, the hysteria rang a little louder deep inside me. I was feeling logical because I feel fine and am taking appropriate precautions…but this week, friends of mine, near and far are battling Coronavirus, bringing the fear …and the gratitude even closer.

I wish I could fill in the blanks at every moment that I feel as speechless as I do at the craziness that is before us. The incompetence, the arrogance and the idiocy. I wish I could hug every person who has lost their loved one and couldn’t say goodbye. I wish I could say more than what I have been saying to myself…”use this time wisely…it will soon be over.” It sounds good, but it still leaves me…with so many blank places.

I was getting comfortable, settled in and complacent in my little world that allows me to sleep late and eat way too much. But now, there is this overwhelming feeling of what now? What next? What have we done to ourselves?

How do we fill in these endless days and repetitive reports that have no end in sight?

Sometimes, I miss the freedom of going outside, without a mask and gloves but my guts tells me that anti-social habit will linger, even when they tell us its “safe?” I hate the distrust that is creeping in. To not trust is a crippling place.

I share this not to be a downer. I share it because I find myself in a sociological mode; looking ,observing, laughing and crying all at once. My senses are heightened. I smell fear and I see danger. I laugh at the blindness and the zealotry that are putting us all at risk. When speechlessness takes over, I ponder. And, I wonder. And then, I write. I for my sanity. I write to find what’s inside that can take me down this long road ahead.

I write, hoping that during this bizarre moment in time that each one of us will come to understand how much each one of us matters; how much we matter to each other.

I am just like you right now at 2:30am, just trying to fill in the blanks. If you are so inclined shoot me an email. Just write the word: Blank in the subject. I will compile what you say, because what you say and feel will matter to someone else.

Our words mean something and we don’t need to know what, just yet. We just need to know that we are all out there, feeling something that needs to be shared.

Perhaps our words will not come up with something as raucous as cheering on the health care workers at 8pm every night. Maybe what we have will be something quieter, something invisible to the naked eye. Perhaps our silence will bring humility, wonder, and a deep desire to start again, someday. Clearly, are lives, as we know, are in question.

Peace and words,

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KG
Blank Page Consulting
Coaching for writers and their lives