March 2020 was a hell of a month. I started it out thinking I was doing Ladies Rock Camp Boston in April, seeing Polaris in June, and going to Firefly in July. By the end of March, all those plans had dissipated, and now, on April 9th, seem unthinkable.
Shit has been weird. We all know this.
It all happened so fast. It took me a couple weeks of panic attacks and crying to catch up – to get it through my head that things were different now, and I had to get used to it real quick or else get crushed under its weight.
I haven’t written much in the past couple of years – I always feel like I’m too busy, or scattered, or sad – and while that’s still true, it feels more important now. I need some record of how this time felt, how it was to exist during the pandemic. I’ve heard a lot of comparisons to 9/11, or to the Boston Marathon bombing, and I’ve made those comparisons myself. But this is different. This is everything, and everywhere, all at once. This is long term. This is daily life essentially changing overnight, and all of us left reeling, trying to make some sense of it, trying to find a way to carry on.
The early days of this (all of three weeks ago), everything felt terrifying all the time. I watched a lot of early 2000s music videos, staying up deep into the night, wallowing in the sadness of times past in a way I haven’t allowed myself in years. I don’t know if that was the right thing to do, but it’s what I did. I felt the same crushing nostalgia, the same formless, aching loss that I did at 15, listening to the same three songs on repeat after I graduated Applewild.
I watched almost every music video Avril Lavigne has ever made, which is a shitload. I watched the video for Complicated, her hair flat ironed and her lids thick with black eyeliner, and missed high school, missed lurking around the mall, missed meandering car rides around Central Mass, missed a time before social media and smartphones, missed being 18.
I watched SNL music performances from only a year or two ago, that felt like relics of a forgotten time. I ached for concerts and crowds and noisy bars.
I allowed myself to feel all of this. And then, as much as I could, I let it go. It was the only way I could keep functioning. Just writing this is bringing it back, but I can’t let it overtake me again.
I’ve carved out a new routine, slowly – I still have a couple of dog walking clients, and it’s kept me leaving the house every day, kept me moving. I still go to the cafe down the street, like every morning, except now I have to order online and pick it up from the sidewalk, a gloved hand reaching out the door with my iced coffee. Stace and I have lunch together most days, he cooks a lot of dinners, we get takeout once or twice a week, our vague attempt to support the restaurants that are still open. Things are not normal. But they are okay.
(The title is from Kaki King’s 2010 album, Junior, which I reviewed on here many moons ago. Just as good now as it was 10 years ago.)
(PS WordPress sucks and I can’t get it to let me have a header that’s the correct size and it keeps tiling it like a fuckin Windows 95 background so I GIVE UP NO HEADER)