sink or swim
“okay, now, this is really too much.”
i couldn’t even begin to tell you how many times i’ve said or thought these words in the last year. in the last four years. each time, i consider the irony, the absurdity, the grief in the fact that the words mean a little less each time — undercut, like a nation’s confidence in a compulsively-lying leader, by the accumulating weight of self-evident contradictions. by which i mean, i’m still here, even after so many blows, so many declarations of “too much-ness.” apparently, i’m a poor judge of just how much i can “take.”
yet it happened again, this past week, as i began to develop worrying symptoms — coughing, shivering, sweating, aching. despite all the precautions that have become a part of our routine, i found myself in rapid decline, with all signs pointing to Covid-19. we went immediately to get tested at a free clinic.
sitting in that rickety, blue-tarped tent that was the best our country’s under-equipped pandemic response can offer, i thought about statistics, and tried to place myself inside them. i attempted to calculate what i knew of the virus’s impact on various demographics, fantasizing that i might be able to identify the Ven Diagram of my vulnerabilities: i’m young, but i’m immunocompromised. i’m insured, but only barely. i’m white, sort of. i’m not rich, but i’m not poor. i live in a state that is currently between surges, but only barely.
for all this speculation, i knew the truth: there was no telling how it might go. fear wound itself around my spine, descending into my clenched gut, but i did not panic. in fact, i kept relatively calm, took that now-familiar swab like a champion, then asked my husband if we could go get ice cream.
maybe that’s the picture of life in 2020. we’ve been in freefall for so long, it seems, that we no longer have energy for full-blown panic.
almost as if we’ve developed a strange new skill, after all these months of social distancing, the skill of holding life itself at arms length, holding our breath when Reality passes too close to us on the sidewalk.
i feel it as i move through the world,
almost as if we’re all swimming underwater,
near each other but muted,
each submerged in a pool of personal preoccupation,
a brew of individual anxieties and imaginations.
our glances are sidelong,
the image of our neighbors distorted, blurred.
at least that’s what i experience here, in New York City, where the heavy weight of our 32,000 dead and nearly half a million cases looms daily. where it feels even eye contact is tenuous, as if we’re afraid looking to closely at one another might be catching — of the virus, or something more existential, perhaps? is it just that we’re all so individually burdened, so swallowed up and sea-tossed, that the thought of looking too deeply at another human being feels like something that might drown us?
the origin of the word “overwhelm” comes from the root “to turn upside down” or “to submerge completely.”
that sounds about right. this year has submerged us. it’s been “too much” for too long.
consider the past week alone (TW: sexual assault):
we buried Ruth Bader Ginsberg and saw the nomination of her replacement, a woman who has indicated her commitment to curtailing so many of the rights Ginsberg fought to establish. (tearful phone calls with friends who work in reproductive rights and women’s health — warriors who are closer to despair i’ve ever seen them).
we watched the travesty of a so-called debate in which two aging white men debased our already-shredded national myth, and our own eyes and ears. on one side, an exasperated career politician, benign in comparison to his opponent but depressingly compromised in his record. on the other, the nightmarish, if familiar, caricature of triumphalist and violent arrogance — this time in particularly rabid and incoherent form.
Joe Biden, it was noted, repeatedly “broke the fourth wall” by speaking directly “to” the audience, but it was Donald Trump who destroyed the whole illusion — the illusion that this is a “normal” election, between two “normal” candidates committed to, or at least bound by, the traditional rules of the game — or even a mutual sense of reality.
Wednesday was a difficult day for many of us. some were directly triggered by the vitriol — by the failure of the “most powerful man in the world” to even utter a few, cheap words disavowing white supremacists (surprise no longer describes my feeling about such news. shock that the “bottom” can sink ever lower, perhaps).
Proud Boys rally in Portland, OR. Photo by Associated Press.
others were feeling wounded by the simple viciousness of the President’s display. memories of past mistreatment by angry, unrepentant bullies resurfaced. friends called off of work, or found themselves falling apart between Zoom calls; others binged, or didn’t eat, or reached for something to rein in their careening emotions — the remote control, a bottle, a blunt.
because that’s the cost of living in this country, for some of us — just getting through a day requires the management of ongoing trauma. i have not had an easy time this week — it marks the six-year anniversary of an episode of sexual abuse, at the hands of a narcissistic boss who, so much like Trump, openly demeaned women while relishing his immunity as a person of power. to this day, i remember the flame in me, the burning desire to fight back, and the choking sense of being trapped, forced to carry on working for months under his direction, unable to effect change inside a system built to protect the men at the top.
in a way, every day since November 2016 has been a reenactment of that experience (and has been similarly re-traumatizing for many of the millions of victims of sexual abuse forced to live in a country in which a proud abuser rules the land).
and that’s not to mention the fact that we are continuing to battle through a pandemic and its attendant disasters, as our Congress repeatedly renew aid for the millions who are out of work or struggling to pay the bills, as we carry on living, trying to cobble together moments of joy or normalcy while protecting ourselves and others from a lethal virus.
which brings us to another “huge” headline, a bizarre twist in this year of “too much,” hit this morning — Donald and Melania Trump testing positive for Covid-19. the implications are many, and still mostly unknown. will it cause a surge of sympathy and support among Republicans? will it finally register the reality of the disease for the deniers? will Trump show any symptoms, or will he be spared, and use that to further undercut science, and the gravity of the disease? we just don’t know.
as for my own Covid test, after several days of waiting in vigilant, quarantined suspense, it came back as good news: we’d both been spared.
so here we are.
granted more time
to continue the privilege and puzzle
of creating a life in the age freefall.
to me, living has always felt like such a responsibility. perhaps it’s the nature of my work, reporting in crises zones and on the edges of war, which has exposed me to so much senseless killing. perhaps it’s my own multiple brushes with death, which has marked me with a sense of the arbitrary and tentative nature of being alive, and how easily it could be otherwise. it could push me towards nihilism, but more often, it pushes me to inhabit every given day more deeply.
but living is tiring these days. what does one do when the daily forecast is overwhelm?
i’m not a great swimmer. i tire quickly — i blame it on a weak upper body and lack of experience.
but i do know how to not-drown.
and i’m pretty sure that counts far more than form or speed.
so i’d first like to say, if you’re feeling submerged, overwhelmed, capsized, you’re not alone, and it’s not at all your fault. this is a madness not of our choosing.
but i’m finding a lot of strength in the little reclamations of agency, these days. the small ways i and others find to steal back some control, some decision, in our lives.
first comes self-preservation. reading up on how to survive when falling overboard or lost at sea, the wisdom is unanimous: conserve energy, stay calm. also, don’t drink the seawater.
for me, that meant: making time for physical pleasure: cooking good meals, spending time outdoors, and lots of palo santo-burning. setting an intention to laugh at least once a day (yes, it’s come to this). letting myself cry and shout when needed. making friends with the barista at a new (!) cafe down the street. one (just one!?) rerun of the Office. a nap. a glass of wine.
but apart from the not-drowning, how do we begin to make our way towards shore? granted, there is no telling just how far it is to land, but if we’re swimming, there’s a chance, at least, we’ll reach it.
so grant me just a moment to say: if you were horrified, saddened, triggered, or shocked by the debates, or by any of the other small-and-large depravities of the last year, please consider that there are things you can do about it. we are not helpless, we are not condemned.
and, if we choose to do nothing, we are not innocent.
it’s hard to believe that there are still undecided voters out there, or would-be voters who tell pollsters they’re not going to bother going to the polls. i’ve been looking into these stories a lot this week, and i’ve discovered one reason that seems to unite almost all of them: a sense of individual disconnection from politics — “it doesn’t make a difference to me personally.”
first of all, almost certainly, your vote (or lack thereof) does impact your life, even if you’re not aware. whether through the appointment of judges who may one day sentence your son or strip you of healthcare, or by tipping the scales of your state legislature towards unjust tax codes or environmental degradation, or by establishing an administration that will determine when and how America goes to war, the effects trickle up and down and round-and-round.
but more than that, honestly, i am struck by the idea that the only reason to vote would be in order to enact or acquire some individual, personal outcome. the naked individualism of it, the abdication of all responsibility to fellow human beings, to this earth.
and even if that were excusable, it just doesn’t work. regardless of any rugged ideas of independence, each of us are bound up in a social order, a national project, a global ecosystem in which the exploitation and suffering of some inevitably, eventually, comes to poison us all. (bankrupting our social safety net, for example, might seem acceptable to a healthy, employed person in “peacetime,” but when a pandemic strikes, the health of the society, and its infrastructure, is what most determines your chances).
so no, i don’t accept this excuse. it is not moral or even rational to weigh your decisions based on a ledger of one. there must be an accounting for the implications of those outside ourselves — this is both a pragmatic imperative as well as an ethical one. scholars and spiritual teachers alike have warned us: the state of a society’s most vulnerable is the strongest indicator of its merit, and its long-term viability.
and i’d argue that if you have the luxury of not feeling politically engaged right now — i’m not talking about exhaustion, but apathy — you’re probably speaking from a place of privilege. too many of us feel a very personal stake in this election, due to the vulnerabilities we face. if you’re not feeling vulnerable, please consider how you can use your position of safety to move toward a world in which more people can also feel secure.
(if this is all coming on strong — well, i’m not sorry, because i don’t have anything to apologize for. discomfort is not an inherently negative thing, and in many cases, it’s an important indicator of truth. if what i’m writing does leave you angry, confused, or unsure, i do invite you to respond, and i promise to listen and engage thoughtfully. i’d much rather challenge one another than silo ourselves off from hard conversations)
i hope you’re convinced, as i am, that our actions and votes do matter, and that we do have the chance to make a difference. it may not feel that way, but there have been so many historic races that have hinged on margins smaller than 1%, a handful of votes swinging both presidential races (à la the electoral college) or life-impacting local elections, some with decades-long implications. and voter suppression in its many insidious forms is well underway in many places, not least of which through the spurious claims of the president.
there is much we have to lose by doing nothing.
many of you are probably already engaged. thank you for doing that. can you do more?
for those of us looking to begin (it’s almost exactly one month til Election Day, so what better time to jump in?), here are just a few suggestions:
1. Talk to people. whether they’re disinterested, disillusioned or distracted, your friends/family/loved ones/colleagues who aren’t planning to vote, or who are perhaps persuaded that a Trump reelection wouldn’t hurt millions, or don’t care that it would — chances are very slim that anything outside personal, meaningful conversation will persuade them at this point. this can be the most taxing, least-fun, and potentially futile way of “getting out the vote” — but research shows it can be more effective than anything else. will you commit to trying? (use your discretion, of course, about what folks may be too toxic for you to engage with; in such a case, is there anyone else in your family/office/group who could try?)
2. Adopt a State. there are numerous organizations that link volunteers to outreach efforts in swing states, such as Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Florida, where the margins are low and where the national outcome might ultimately be determined. this is especially great for those of us, like myself, who live in states where the presidential vote is predictable. (don’t forget to educate yourself on local and state candidates, though!) i am working on Florida and Pennsylvania. it’s easy and can be tailored to fit your availability and comfort level.
3. Make sure you have a voting plan. it’s confusing out there. on top of mixed messages and unfounded claims coming from the White House, there are very real, often arcane, rules around voting by mail/absentee/early in each individual state. if you can, vote early in person (i’ll be voting in the third week of October, and have the address of the polling site recorded on my phone). if you’re voting by mail, though, great! just make sure you’ve covered all your bases: registered, requested a ballot (where necessary), and are able to cast the ballot by the third week of October at the latest, or drop it off in person. (there are even more nuances depending on your state — let Nate Silver or Stephen Colbert help you out here!)
4. Help fight voter suppression. Or donate to a political candidate or party you support. Or donate to help returning citizens (formerly incarcerated persons) access the vote. Or volunteer your time as a poll-watcher. Or commit to reading up on your local elections some time in the next week, and letting one person know what you learned. etc etc etc.
5. Then, take a break.
6. Repeat as desired/able.
this has been a slightly different tone and format than my usual letters. but we are living in “unprecedented times,” after all, so i don’t feel the need to stand on ceremony. i’m just mad enough to keep swimming, grateful enough to still be breathing, and tired enough to do anything for a change. i’m thankful for this scattered, strange little tribe of [me]re readers, who i know will take in my dizzy, earnest words with grace this week. i hope some of you are out there laboring along with me.
until next week, keep swimming.
Sarah
(this essay was originally published in my weekly newsletter, [me]re. please subscribe here to join the conversation!)
