Online, people tend to point out that after mass shootings in America, politicians will often send a tweet that says something like “thoughts and prayers [to the people affected in American school X].” It is clockwork reliable, and it is obviously dumb insofar as a politician who is working at the federal or state level can and should be empowered enough to say that a mass shooting at a high school, church, workplace, mall, or any other acts of public terrorism inflicted upon innocent Americans is a bad thing, and, instead of offering easy words, perhaps this politician could do the work, like passing laws, to make sure that guns are a little less easy to access, considering this is generally a public health problem and now children have to do lockdown drills in schools? I mean, it took me four tries to get my license to drive a car, and that was a good thing since a car weighs at least a ton and could be used as a weapon to take someone’s life. But I could get a gun today if I had the desire. That doesn’t track.
When the pandemic was at its height in New York, I was in a lucky position. I could stay at home. I didn’t have to take public transportation. I knew a lot of people who had covid-19 but they were young and likely to heal rather quickly. There was a disconnect between my day-to-day life and what the news was reporting about New York. And I started to get messages from family and friends, offering up “Thoughts and Prayers!” It was all well meaning, which oftentimes is the least you can expect from a person you have a connection with, and these days, knowing that people mean well and care enough on social media has to be enough.
But have you ever had the words “Thoughts and Prayers” thrown your way? It’s fairly chilling, to be honest. It feels like they know that you could possibly die and this is what they had to offer. Empty words that mean nothing to the receiver, who is still at risk, scared, and basically traumatized from living under a pandemic where nothing is safe because structures and institutions have fobbed it off on the individual.
But thoughts and prayers are symptoms, not the disease. When institutions fail people en masse, then the meaningless words start to be thrown around as a substitution for action. When coronavirus was taking New Yorkers’ lives, Andrew Cuomo would make speech after speech, celebrating the “essential workers” and “heroes” who are “New York tough.” Essential workers, from health care to grocery stores to schools, were, and are, heroes, of course. They are also underpaid. They were and are being put under great risk. And New York just offered them words, mostly. It’s no coincidence that mothers - also underpaid in America, with literally no support in the way of childcare or health care or anything of that ilk - are also our “heroes.” Hero is just another word for working in a system that does nothing to serve you.
I want and like it when words can mean something. So often they can be just empty. But this year has given me so many phrases that are just air being pushed out of someone’s mouth, like when I was talking about the loneliness of thinking about what it’s going to be like to give birth right now, with my mother dead, my family far away (in far off countries and far off states like Massachusetts), unlikely to see me or my child for years, and generally not being able to build a community for a major life event in any way thanks to the coronavirus. I got an it’ll all be okay, “you’re so strong!” in response. It was a cliche. It didn’t mean anything. And it wasn’t anything close to having someone listen to you. And I’m afraid that’s one thing from this year that’s just exceedingly difficult to square away: the problems are at your front door. And the people who have the power to change things, the people who could be human for just one moment, aren’t listening to you.
I was trying to be ambitious and write a bunch of essays before I have a distinct lack of time and or brain cells, but I don’t have much in the way of ambition at the moment, and frankly, I think that’s okay. So this substack is going to remain intermittent and hardly a brand extension for now. But I promise the next letter will be cheerier! It’s just that this is a year of a lot of feelings, all complicated.