One of the hardest things about getting older, more than my inability to read in near-dark anymore, random aches and pains whenever I sleep wrong, or any visible signs that age may bring like wrinkles and graying hair, may be the loss of my faith in humanity. While 2016-2019 did not help maintain it, things that have been happening since 2020 seem to have dealt the final blows. I was relaying to J recently the story of how I found out there was no Santa Claus. My mother, cleaning the bathroom where I'd trapped her in with my 9 year old form, determined to find out the truth after a rather brisk day of naysayers on the school playground. She confirmed my suspicions, made me promise not to tell my sister, and it was only after a few minutes when I realized that not believing in Santa anymore meant that nothing--Easter bunnies, tooth fairies, ghosts, or probably even god did not exist. I was hit with a wave of sadness in what may have been the first moment of utter heartbreak in my young life.
It would be followed by more, some global some very personal only to me. Some easier to move past, some not so much. The pandemic came from nowhere, and even as it happened, as we locked down and masked up, part of me felt incredulous. Like the real was not quite real. But then again, even little traumas can feel this way. Losses, disappointments, twists of fate. At the beginning, I was just looking to make it through unscathed and without coming down with it By the end, something had broken in me, and apparently is still prone to more breaking as the events of Tuesday night and the following day played out.
There's a reason that something global like that catalyzes people. One one hand many people had a moment to pause and reconsider what they were doing with their lives, especially amid a new threat to that very life or those around them. There's a reason we had things like the Great Resignation follow in its stead. Why the pandemic years are littered with divorces, broken friendships, and estranged relatives. Why even I finally had the courage to leave a job that was taking advantage of me and I am pretty sure killing me with frustration and financial strife regularly. Working from home, new options in gig work, and other changes caused a lot shifting in how people worked either by desire or necessity.
But in addition to those gains and changes, there were losses. I legit believed that people would follow medical guidance and protocols and the pandemic would be something we could move through with less death and minor inconvenience and then move past. Instead, it led to deeper divides, selfishness, crazy Karen disruptions, more lies on the part of an already shifty government. People always talk about 9/11 and how it rattled their sense of safety, and it surely did, but Covid rattled not only that, but our conviction of human nature being mostly good, something I stupidly still believed until that pandemic spring. I realize maybe I live a sheltered life through perpetually rose-colored glasses, combined with a sarcastic, but overall optimistic bent.
Another chunk in that veneer came this past Tuesday as I watched those red states notch into place and even the popular vote climb higher than it even seemed possible. I know die-hard red-hatted dogs weren't going to be swayed by anything, but I did not realize the rates of gullibility nor hatred among the rest of the Americans. Maybe I should have. With the that veneer gone, more and more I can see right into the black, black heart.
