The Metaphor Was Washed Away By The Mudslide. Apologies.

     On 12 March, 2020, most of us had no idea what the future was going to do to us.

    For over a year, I heard "I just want to get back to normal" shouted from the opposing bank, as the small creek swelled and became deadly rapids. I was on the other bank shouting "NO THANK YOU NORMAL WAS NOT WORKING" into the roaring water, heard only by those on my own bankside, who were also foolishly shouting into the deluge.

    Now I'm trying to explain why I am consumed by a malaise.

    Sure, it's now 5 August 2021. The vaccine has been available for eight months, yet we are staring down another school year with panicked administrators, angry teachers and confused students. Didn't I just leave this party? Does this mean the "new normal" is what we faced last fall: unrelenting uncertainty? So August 2020 was "the new normal"? 

    Normal: conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected.

    I propose we strike "normal" from every day use: the dictionary, thesaurus, Fox News, CNN, governors and school boards.  And if I hear "New Normal" one more time, I guess I'll scream some more into the white water, because there seems to be no way to stop anything, anymore. Any thing, any more? Are those four words or two? There is no stopping the torrents of water, so I just stay stuck on the bank and shout into it. I don't know why. It seems "normal"?

    Nobody can tell me what they mean by "back to normal" outside of going to work and school and not wearing masks. I posit that was not "normal", it is your experience, living your life, but was it "normal"? It was normal to work years at a job you could be replaced at with no one noticing, then retire and stay home, or travel. That was my parents "normal", it is not mine. Times changed, normal changed.

    My school normal was to attend school and do as I was asked, learn history the way the text books depicted it and believe that I could some day, work a job for forty years and then retire without anyone noticing, stay home or travel. I've already pointed out that the job thing is not reality for me, and I do not believe the history that I was taught, or the controlling set up of the traditional classrooms to prepare me for a life at a desk or on an assembly line, should be called "normal". They were  the way things were in the 1970's, which were different than the way things were in the 1950's, which were different from the way things were at the turn of the century, and so on, and so on. Normal changes, people, and you can't go back once it has just because you liked it that way. Times change.

    Normal shifts, it is not stationary. It was normal for chamber pots to be chucked out the window of your dwelling, adding sewage to the mud in the streets  200 years ago. It changed.

    The people I hear whining about wanting things to go back to normal seem to be unaware that medical costs were bankrupting citizens, medicines had become so expensive that people were forced into decisions that started with "Which will kill me first?" in order to choose which medication to purchase. The cost of living and housing prices have skyrocketed while pay rates stay stagnant, forcing college graduates to move back home, and others to rethink their career choices. Pets go unattended, not spayed or neutered and are abused and neglected. Children clog the foster care system. Schools are lectured for 'failing' because students do not attend classes. Parents working two jobs realize that one of their jobs is only paying for day care. And we all have eyeballs to see the homeless population growing.

    I believe "normal" simply means "I've become comfortable with that." So start staying that instead, because that's what you mean. Everything I just listed is what you've become comfortable with. Own it. Saying it's normal makes it sound like everything was OK.

    Everything was not OK.

    I have been unable to pull myself out of the depression that has run my life like a mudslide, moving slowly at first, receding, returning, first meandering around the tree trunk, then gathering strength and knocking it down simply because it is stronger and more relentless than the tree. It has been here so long that it cannot even be called depression any more, because I got bored with that, and usually depressions end. This is a never ending malaise. 

    Malaise:  general feeling of discomfort, illness, or uneasiness whose exact cause is difficult to identify. 

    Which brings me to my next point, which is that I have become comfortable with that malaise.

    I adjusted everything to keep standing. I never believed this was going to ever be "over", and there is no joy in validation. But because I've held on so long, I cannot seem to adjust, to pivot right or left to accommodate the unrelenting sludge. I just dug in and waited it out, not realizing the mud was not receding, and I was stuck. So while I was not knocked down by the deluge, I am also unable to move because of it.

    So I face the coming school year, knowing that nothing is going to be the same and everything is going to suck, but at least I see it coming this time, and I can manage to somehow stay steady. The malaise is what I've become used to, and now I can manage to face the future with my new friend, who  sits right next to me to make sure I don't relax or exhale, that I stay uncomfortable as I wait for the next mudslide.

    At least I still have a few people on my side of the river bank, none of us able to move, very much like Hamlet, trapped in thought and sadness, unable to act. A small grove of Elizabethan trees who occasionally look at one another and share a sloth meme and send thoughts of support we do not feel, but that we think will help. It keeps us standing. So far we've not been shoved into the rapids, so we have that going for us.