Life Is Not An Argument To Be Won

I am tired of arguing with you. I don’t know why we keep having this argument. I don’t want to keep having this argument but we can’t seem to get away. We keep coming back to it with the same ferocity we had the first time we came to blows. (Linguistic, auditory blows - I’ve never hit anyone!)

We run around each other in circles and we draw our battle lines. You stand there and I’ll stand here. And we may trade places occasionally but we will never admit that we were wrong. And we will never admit that we have changed, either. Because being wrong is bad. And change is a sign of weakness.

We listen to each other but only as a means to craft our next barrage. I don’t actually want to take in what you’re saying. I want to win. And I’m worried that if I hear what you are saying deep down in my soul it will get inside of me. I’ll be infected then. I’ll have to go to the hospital. And the hospitals are full of people dying.

A ship is coming up from Virginia as we speak to help with this, but it won’t actually be of much use. It is a band-aid on a lost limb. It’s presence doesn’t even make me feel better.

One day that ship will leave. It won’t leave because we’re cured. It will leave because there will be others who need it more.

Why does everything now become about this? I am tired of talking about it. Tired of thinking about it. But what else did we think about? What was life like in the before? That seems like a lifetime ago.

How will life have changed in two weeks from now? We won’t be at peak yet.

Is this helping you feel better?

You speak emphatically because you are worried that I will do something stupid. I am alone now and it seems that people who are alone have the most time to be idiotic. And I assure you that I won’t but I only really believe part of that assurance. I’m scared of myself because I’ve never been here before. Life is always new but this really feels like a new version of life. And also what will life be like after? No one seems to know.

I try not to imagine the hell-scape that is New York Presbyterian or Bellvue or Lenox Hill or Mount Sainai. Doctors and nurses and other hospital staff trying desperately to save people they know may not be saved. In the past couple week we’ve learned what ventilators are or at least we know now that they are worth their weight in gold. When I think of a ventilator I still think of the area in front of a car’s engine. The mouth part in movies with talking cars. I know that that’s wrong but I’m not sure I want to know what the right answer is.

I watched all of the clips that were on Youtube for the movie World Trade Center starring Nicholas Cage last night. The one where he’s a firefighter and then gets trapped under a bunch of rubble and then gets found in the end. Maggie Gyllenhaal is also in it. I think she plays Nicholas Cage’s wife. I don’t know why I decided to do it but it felt like the right thing to do at the time. It felt like it fit. People keep on comparing what is happening right now to 9/11. Or World War II. My eighth grade history teacher would have called it a “watershed event.” “Watershed events” are fine to read about but aren’t really all that fun to live through.

We argue about whether or not I should come home. I tell you that I should stay here and that self-isolating only works if you actually do it. I’ve been here for two weeks. I can’t wait to see what the next two weeks brings. You want me to come down to Maryland because you are worried about me. Because I once made a comment to you that I think that the rate of suicide will increase with social distancing. I think I’m right but what you don’t understand is that I wasn’t talking about myself. I was talking about someone else.

I look out my window and I can’t see the Manhattan skyline. It’s raining. For once the weather is playing along.