Almost normal.
But not quite there.
It is this liminal space I’ve talked about before, where we are all floating around in our “normal” lives while normalcy seems like some distant farce we used to believe in.
For some of us, anyway. I see on the news the ones desperate for hair cuts and discount deals at TJ Maxx. I understand the desperation, to be honest — I think we are living in a state of reactionary fear, but the difference is that some fear losing what little sense of self and status they clung to in the past despite the fact that those beliefs have long be self-destructive. Living with blinders on feels safe but isn’t, not even close.
Of course they say the same thing, believing that freedom lives in racism and capitalism and religious cults. Those of us who were always living in that state of fear based on knowing that conservative Republicans would really just like us all to be dead or, at best, slaves…we know better. We see the machine eating us up and have been fighting back for generations.
All these thoughts were spurred into spinning through my mind when an older white woman nearly pushed me off the sidewalk so she would not have to walk through a small puddle.
I was wearing a mask. She wasn’t. We were walking in opposite directions and I had drifted to the edge of the sidewalk to put distance between us. She was walking with a friend (also w/out a mask) and saw me coming, and didn’t move, then saw the puddle and just stepped right into my personal space.
And maybe it was instinct for her, a quick side step to avoid a puddle — I’m not attributing animosity to her actions. No, just self-centered obliviousness at best, willful ignorance at worst. No mask, no thought to what consequence her actions might have for others. And sadly that does seem to be the default setting for at least 30% of our country…enough to kill.