PopcornJackTerry

I have not written a blog in so long. I hope I remember how to do it.

I got talking to a friend last night via text message all because of a misunderstood text I’d sent a week earlier. We managed to figure out what I meant, and then she proceeded to open up to me in a way I never expected. She has been one of my closest friends for 30 years, and I never would have suspected she was having such a hard time through all of this. That became part of the conversation, that I, as a friend so far away and not in her daily life, was someone she could turn to, because she felt if she reached out to her close peers, they wouldn’t understand.

The common thread whenever I’ve had this type of conversation with anyone about this is the uncertainty of it all. If we knew this ended in six months or six years, we could adjust and live accordingly. But it is the unknown that leads to the sens of loss and hopelessness. Give us an end date, and that gives us something to look forward to. Well, maybe not forward, but a focal point we can drive to. This raging uncertainty makes us all victims in a lifeboat, no oars, sharks around us, left to the mercy of the tides.

This morning, my friend’s conversation still fresh in my memory, I drove by portable electric road signs, the two wheeled three lined ones that tell us roads are closed or lanes are blocked, directing people to a vaccination site. I didn’t know there was one in my neighborhood, those as a currently unqualified person I hadn’t paid much attention, but that image, combined with the PSA’s I saw last summer about masking up and socially distancing (Hey Floriduh, how did that work out for you?) I thought of one thing:

We are living in our Hollywood moment. Only it isn’t the one we expected.

We’ve all seen this movie, some variation of it where we survive a dystopian future (or not.) Some are supremely bleak, others are subtle, but we’re all familiar with them. We probably each have our favorite, no matter how much we love rom-coms or sci-fi, there’s that one movie we watch to keep us sane, to think “That might be close to my reality, but it will never be ours.” (Mine is “V for Vendetta” for the actors and the reasonably positive outcome.) But we never thought we’d be the ones stuck behind limitations on vaccinations, rationing toilet paper, scampering for income after months of nothing. Our Hollywood moments were Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, Indiana Jones and a bag of sand, and a tomb, and a rolling rock, and snakes, why did it have to be snakes? We never viewed ourselves as heroes in our own dystopian adventure. But here we are.

Hopefully tomorrow this adventure takes a turn in a new direction. I don’t know if it will. I believe, but there’s a lot of animosity in our country that makes me nervous. But there is one thing, the same thing that has kept so many people hamstrung and worried, so unsure about what they are going to do, how things will turn out, that actually gives me hope. And I found it tonight hanging out with the same friends I’ve talked about, the ones who keep me sane.

In humanity, hope springs eternal.

We cannot believe this is the way the world should be because we inherently believe the best, that good will rise above bad, that there will be a return to something that may not be the old normal, but a new normal that showcases the best of us all. And yes, I know not everyone believes that. Some are so against it they fight tooth and nail against a world of equality, of justice, of love. And some sadly could no longer fight, and found a better answer in hoping for a better next world. Believe me, I know that struggle, I know that “who cares” that powers that, the “why does it matter” that can be so overpowering.

Truth is I don’t know. I have so many friends and family I love and who love me that I could never cash out early. And that alone keeps me going, somehow, one foot after another. That, and I tell myself this:

Hollywood writes their own endings, and if this is my Hollywood moment, then it is mine to write. (And seriously, who better to write than me?) And even if every movie doesn’t end the way we want it to, they’re usually smart enough to write us a sequel that works out well. If this isn’t the life you expected, write chapter two, or three, or seventeen, or whichever chapter you need to.

It is your world. It is your story.

And I want to know it.