Pip Massey Renard
My parents have always been light sleepers. This was both a frustration and a boon when I was little as I figured, since they woke up at the slightest sound of the creaking hallway floorboards, they’d have time to grab us and flee if someone snuck in to murder us (irrational childhood fear), But it also meant that I could not, say, get 2 steps out of my room for a midnight snack before they would catch me. Back home during quarantine, I am constantly listening.
My mother asks me what my schedule is. I write it down for her, and she puts it up on the fridge, next to my brothers’ schedules.
My father hates closed doors in the house. we used to keep our bedroom doors open all the time as kids. none of the doors (save the front) had locks, not even the bathroom. back at home, I prefer to keep my door closed and I jump when someone knocks, scattering my papers. I ask my family not to come in when my door is closed. My father responds that the door is always closed (it is not, though to be fair, it is a good amount). I don’t like being constantly surveilled. Privacy is a privilege that is only earned if you do well. I feel the need to justify all my actions, to ask permission, or at least prevent judgement. I play Minecraft sitting on my bed, computer screen not visible from the doorway, following that urge to conceal even though I am not doing anything wrong.
Surveillance lets up if you prove you are doing well on your own. I was not always doing fine on my own, but I had trouble telling that to my parents. I wanted to be honest with them, but I didn’t want to be scrutinized.
My mother asks me when my finals are due. I tell her. She asks me how school is going. I say well. She asks me if I am getting all my work done. I say yes (I mostly am, though not on time).
It is two in the morning. Henry and I stay up late but he is downstairs so he can zoom without waking up our family. I go to the kitchen to get a snack. The lights are off. I turn them on. Dad is in the living room, sleeping on the couch cause his back hurts. I hear the door creak open as I make myself a burrito.
“Why haven’t you gone to bed?”
“I’m about to.”
“Are you getting all your work done? Not behind on anything?”
“Yep. All good. Getting it done.”
“Really?”
[with emphasis] “Yes!”
“Ok. Goodnight. I love you.”
“Goodnight. Love you too.”
He goes back into the living room, and I spirit my burrito away. The floorboards creak when I step on them and when I listen closely, under the white noise of my heater, I can hear my father settle back into bed.
May 5th, 2020
I have been thinking a lot about stagnation. It is a word I revile.
Stagnation is muddy runoff, blooms of algae, the stink of something doomed to rot. If I didn’t have a body, I might love the process of decay. But would this distance only make me cruel? If I can love the mushrooms for the way they consume and remake if I can love the way we all will eventually return to soil, then why do crawling things fill me with such fear? Perhaps it is the cyclicality of decay I find comforting, rather than its physical nature, from which I recoil. If death is the true equalizer, sickness is its biased executioner. Life isn’t fair (in part because we have made it so), so I understand the appeal of an afterlife that offers both justification and reward for all one’s suffering, but it does not, cannot, drive me. In place of grief, I have a roiling, helpless anger.
In part, this is most likely because I am more personally removed than most and thus death is the smoke (as of now) rather than the fire. I am perched on a place with the luxury of safety, and from my perch, I feel that all I can be is a watcher. There are ways to help, of course, but not ways to put this fire out myself, and the perceived futility of it is not unfamiliar, not a reason to give up, but it is wearying. This feeling is not exclusive to the pandemic, of course, just magnified, revealed to more.
Additionally, the particulars of this tragedy mean that direct methods of helping, methods of community outreach that would usually be preferred in a crisis are limited (the degree of which depends, of course, on one's circumstance). Thus it is harder to see the impacts of our actions, our care, and our apathy. Helping, connecting, living, all look different to many now (though not all), and it’s okay to mourn that before we move forward.
But what does “moving forward” look like? What does it mean to “move forward” when so many people are unable to, are prevented from doing so? I am seething with a rage I feel is not for me to feel. How dare we be told to honor those we have lost when their loss could have been prevented, could still be prevented, is not being prevented—when it didn’t have to go like this, choices that were made, are being made, will be made, comparing the value of one life to another, or prioritizing money over all? How can we weep when we should be shouting? What good is this shouting if no one will listen?
May 8th, 2020
I have spent this quarantined in a self-imposed limbo. I love school, and I am lucky to have the privilege to go to school, to have a laptop and wifi and a house I am safe in. It is my duty, as well as my joy and privilege, to complete my assignments in a timely and satisfactory matter, and yet I still struggle to do so. I know this is in part, due to the fact that I have ADHD and also that we are in an actual pandemic, but that does not feel like enough of a reason.
I know, for some, blogging offered a sort of catharsis. I have struggled with how to write this. I have struggled with what to write. My story is the only one I feel qualified to tell, and yet what good to others is this telling? No way of telling feels quite right, but the telling must be done regardless. Perhaps I get tripped up on the tone. What do I say that hasn’t been said before? I have not spent this quarantine learning to play the violin and getting buff, and I feel at once guilty for not bettering myself and yet guilty also for even having the option to do so, when so many do not.
“Romanticization of quarantine is a class privilege”, as this cartoon by Bruno Iyda Saggese reminds us. Inaction and action, stagnation and growth, feel evenly selfish. Though I know everyone has their own experience, and that comparison is only a form of self-sabotage that benefits no one (least of all me), I do not know how to make it feel true. But we must allow ourselves to feel our feelings, even if we do not like them, as otherwise, we cannot move forward. Perhaps I have spent this quarantine slowly turning myself to stone. I cast this granite sheath off. My assignment is to witness, and so I will witness.
May 10th, 2020
“Many of us who do frontline work to ease trauma and bring about social and environmental change understand that bearing witness, amplifying the story, and taking right action are our most important tasks. But how do we witness, and what is the right action?… If we choose wrong—or, worse yet, if our attention strays—how much more suffering will go unnoticed?”(15-16)
In conjunction with my last post, I want to talk about trauma stewardship. I was introduced to the concept of trauma stewardship in Intro to Peer Helping Skills 1 (a class I can’t recommend enough) in an excerpt from Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky and Connie Burk.
Trauma stewardship centers around the idea that we all have a trauma exposure-response (similarly referred to as compassion fatigue) and while the “depth, scope, and causes are different for everyone”, we are all “affected by the suffering of others and of our planet”(6) The things we witness change us, often without our realizing. We must accept that it takes a toll on us, even if we do not feel it should. In mapping and accepting our trauma exposure response, we are able to move forward, to accept care for ourselves so that we may better care for others. “My work for trauma stewardship,” says van Dernoot Lipsky, “starts with each of us as individuals. This emphasis comes from my personal belief… that our capacity to help others and the environment is greatest when we are willing, able, and even determined to be helped ourselves”(16).
The quote below offers a further outline.
"When we talk about trauma in terms of stewardship, we remember that we are being entrusted with people’s stories and their very lives, animals’ well-being, and our planet’s health. We understand that this is an incredible honor as well as a tremendous responsibility. We know that as stewards, we create a space for and honor others’ hardship and suffering, and yet we do not assume their pain as our own. We care for others to the best of our ability without taking on their paths as our paths. We act with integrity towards our environment rather than being immobilized by the enormity of the current global climate crisis. We develop and maintain a long-term strategy that enables us to remain whole and helpful to others and our surroundings even amid great challenges”(6).
Embroiled in a system that places our value in our ability to produce, self-care that cannot be monetized is seen as trivial, secondary, an unnecessary stop in production. But self-care is vital. It is a reminder that we exist, and that that is enough. We must take care of ourselves as well as others.
“People may come to believe that feeling happy or lighthearted is a betrayal of all of the countless humans, creatures, and environments that are under siege on this planet. They may act as if the only way they can express solidarity with suffering of any kind is by suffering themselves. Somewhere between internalizing an ethic of martyrdom and ignoring ongoing crisis lies the balance that we must find in order to sustain our work. The more we can attend to this balance, the greater our odds of achieving a sustainable practice of trauma stewardship”(16).
I think about this quote a lot. I don’t have much analysis to add because I think it speaks so clearly, but I wanted to share, as it is something that has helped me give myself the permission to just be, especially in times like these. We will feel the bad and the good, and our feeling it doesn’t minimize or negate anyone else’s experience. Just be, if you can. Just be, and it is enough.
(Apologies, by the way, that I was not able to block quote, this system still baffles me. Also, please reach out to me at mmassey@oberlin.edu if you would like a copy of the reading these quotes are from, and I'll gladly pass it along!)
May 11th, 2020
what do you think
this singing and shuddering is,
what this screaming and reaching and dancing
and crying is, other than loving
what every second goes away?
(from Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay)
First, here is the link to this whole wonderful poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58762/catalog-of-unabashed-gratitude(from Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay)
Second, here is the list to a playlist I made for a friend based on this poem. I feel it sums up my thoughts better than words could: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1peLyleGEYIlC86jMSpa59?si=55hj_XZNQqenwcMMV6ofAA
I have been thinking about witnessing in turns of wonder. I have been thinking about how the world is always ending, just not for everyone, and for some more than others, sometimes. I am thinking that I want to offer you all something to hold in your hand so you can see how it changes when the light hits it at different angles. I am thinking (to be honest), that I should drink more water (and you should too, most likely), and that after I finish writing this, perhaps I will make myself a nutella sandwich, or perhaps I will just go to bed. I am thinking that I hope you are well, wherever you are, especially now, when well is more precarious than usual. Perhaps delight does not have to spring from ignorance but from a desperate defiance to make the world better, kicking and screaming against the dark. It is all going away, every second every day, and what is that but a reason to love it harder now?