The ground around the mall is covered with snow and ice. People are covered with masks and parkas. I imagine tight lips behind the masks, but I can’t see so maybe I’m projecting. I follow a couple who looks lost in some random search for Gucci or Kate Spade. We’re in the middle of nowhere shopping and pretending.
Emptiness. A flutter of anxiety. The horror of shopping. I’m thinking everything looks and feels dead and empty. This emptiness feeling is relentless suddenly and I’m having trouble breathing. I pull down my mask and wonder, when will this feeling end? When will this feeling that everything is unreal and wavering end?
We leave empty handed. I’m hungry and driving down the interstate. Now what? People are waiting for normalcy but there’s no normalcy after this. We’ve seen the void, the big black hole in the center of the universe. We know fragile and temporary and how relationships unravel under pressure, revealing. We know that some of us can keeping going on while others lose it. We know there’s an end to wishful thinking. We know we can survive without living.
My son, who is sitting in the passenger seat, lets out a heavy sigh and closes his eyes. I think, this man creation came out of me! He’s grown up now so I see him as my son but not belonging to me. We are two passengers on the same ride but tomorrow is unknown. We are thrown together for this fleeting moment and somehow I find solace in his presence.
I’m exhausted when I get home, like the sensation of emptiness sucked the life out of me. How nice would it be to slip into some drug induced coma right now but instead, I pour myself a scotch and start cooking.
I thought I had learned to surrender to all this already, to just let tomorrow go, find joy in the present ordinary. I thought anxiety would’ve disappeared by now and that I’d be swimming every day in the great big ocean of freedom like a Buddha whale. I thought eventually my heart would stop aching. But alas, this being human is a guest house and I’ll be visited every day in spite of awakening.
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