just another day

the beginning of a new year is usually filled with a ton of hallmark nonsense that is repeated with wide eyed hope every three hundred and sixty five days...new year new you! brand new start! ten pounds! this is going to be my year! blah blah blah. no. not this year. this new year is a full stop, take stock, hunker down, and be grateful beginning. ten pounds overweight? oh, how hollow the old new year's noises of our lifetimes in the hoary face of an ongoing global pandemic. 

as we've clearly seen in the last year, there is no ground. we are groundless. there are no guarantees and no familiar expectations that life will be going along balanced on it's linear thread. nope. no. it doesn't mean there isn't any hope. it just means the terms of hope have radically changed.

as the year changed from the 2020 nightmare to the 2021 unknown, something changed in me. the fear regarding the virus changed. i've been afraid for about a year now, since january 2020, when i stopped going to my hot yoga class in flu season after a young man coughed out his lungs beside me for an hour. that, coupled with the vague but slightly alarming word that there might be something going wrong in china, some unexplainable illness, made me say to myself-'ya know, i'm going to take a break from the these sweaty, hot, claustrophobic, deep breathy, thick aired, packed in like sardines classes full of world travellers until i know what this is' since then, i've been on high alert, dousing myself every day in the local news, waiting for instructions.

but something changed on new year's day. a weird calm came over me, which i can only describe as an acceptance of death. not just death death, that too, but death of a version of hope, the hope to return to normal, whatever that was. the internal struggle about how to control the situation left me. it's not that i don't care, or won't do as i've been doing to keep me and everyone i come into contact with safe-it's just a letting go of the tightening that's lived within me for this past year. maybe i'm not explaining it well. oh well- something tells me there may be some time to think it over and express it in a better way. or more likely, i'll go back to my recent hyper vigilance, my stomach in a variety of knots, waiting for the world to open again. for someone to come and save the day.