Live Free/Stay Safe
There are a lot of ways to be in jail. I hold the keys to the one I’m in now because I create it for myself, in my head, when I put my life and the lives of others I might infect behind the myriad things my little brain wants. My brain wants highlights, a moms’ night out in real life, a trip to the beach with friends, an airplane ride to see family.
My little brain, the jailer, says our survival — yours and mine — is less important than hiding my brown/grey roots. It’s less important than having someone else come clean my toilet, someone else cook my food, someone else watch my kid, entertain my kid, do something with my kid so that I don’t have to admit that I can’t do what I used to do — I can’t be totally available when he’s home — because he’s home All The Time now. And I am his #1 playmate All The Time now.
And I’m grateful, but I don’t want to play ninjas all the time. I need time alone. And my hair is not naturally blonde. And I’m a really, really bad housekeeper. Like, bad. Mike says this is not news to him, but still, I’d prefer to be a bit better than I am. On so many levels.
And I’m not getting better or being better than I am because I am doing my best and it looks like this. So I have to get real, get into what matters to big girl me.
I want to live. I want my family to live. I want you and your family and friends to live. I don’t want to get this thing and I don’t want to give it to you — the grey hair, the veggie burgers for the third night in a row, the raging FOMO Fear of Missing Out as things reopen and people I like, really do like, do things that sound like they’d be so fun, together in real life, except for the fact that Every Legit Scientist and Medical Authority on the planet says it’s not time.
That if I succumb to those childish, or rather, human, but self-destructive, wants and needs and call it freedom, I’m letting go of my number one, primal, priority. Live and let live.
It’s not time to do that stuff if we want to stay healthy. 100,000. None of my close friends. Yet. Not my family. Yet. But they are someone’s close friends and family.
So now you know how shallow I can be. It helps to tell you. I’m coming out: People are dying and I crave a croissant and a soy latte with my peeps. And now, I could get one. But I’m not doing it. Not yet. I’m free. Free to prioritize what really matters to me, rather than be a prisoner of my old habits, my fleeting surface desires and vanities. Free to enjoy all I have to enjoy here at home. Which is so, so, much.
I tell myself what I tell Ax, “When will we see our friends in real life?”
“When it’s safe.”
“When will that be?”
“I don’t know.”
And that’s the truth. I’m gonna keep going.
