Strange

 

This year.

I lost all interest in life and strived even harder to improve it.

I saw a white old man take the reins of the free world from another white old man and the woke celebrated like all our problems were solved.

I wore the brightest red lipstick behind my covid masks. 

I didn’t take any photos and stopped calling myself a photographer. 

I stopped writing and kept calling myself a writer.

I fell in love with an animal and joined the ranks of those I used to scoff at who called their pets their children. 

I accepted that teenagers are not the humans they will eventually be, and I became a better parent.

I grovelled at a white woman’s feet so she would stop making my life miserable, and the grovelling didn’t make me more miserable. 

I flaunted my ‘Fuck’ mug in a virtual job interview and still got the job. 

I found joy and peace but saw my health deteriorate in the midst of all that happiness. And a naturopath gave me remedy for grief. 

Strange. This year. 

And in the early days of the pandemic, when the subway was empty and silent, I saw an ad by a shelter on my ride to work. It showed a woman of colour with a little baby. It said that Zayna used to have a steady job but now she cannot afford to make rent. They asked us to care about Zayna and her poor baby of colour. 

To the right, the tiny ttc screen flashed its own messaging which said ‘there is no excuse for not paying your fare.’ 

Between Zayna presenting the coloured face of poverty and the sign that did not accept poverty as an excuse for not paying your fare, sat a human hunched over their emaciated body with comfortable ease. 

Torn clothes, filthy hands, and the most unkempt long hair with white paint like droplets caked all over. And then I noticed the two black birds. One that sat atop the nest-like mattress of matted hair and the other one on a bony shoulder. Both birds sat quietly through the subway ride like it was the most usual mode of transportation for them. Their little beady eyes moved between states of wakefulness and sleep. Every once in a while, after every sharp turn of the train, a gentle hand patted the bird on the shoulder.

I stared. I smiled. I felt grief. 

I did not take a photo. 

Strange. 

 

COVID19 Confession

The COVID-19 pandemic has left us all in grief wrapped in fear.

I went through some stages of grief – denial, bargaining, even acceptance in sporadic spurts. And then I landed in the frenzy of a relentless need to do something.  Fortunate for me, I work at a place that does not cower in the face of a crisis. As soon as the city shutdown, we mobilized to transform our services – giving daily takeaway meals, doing community check-ins, putting together resources, and figuring out how to do more and more to respond to the needs of people who already had very little to begin with, and are the most vulnerable in this pandemic. So we put on our gloves, and we smile behind our masks as we hand out meals. We look for familiar faces who used to come to our weekly drop-ins to see if they’re doing okay. 

In this work, I forget myself and reject my fears. It is allowing me to hold on to the image I have of myself even though the world has changed so much.

But I have stopped hugging my child. When I come home from work, I scrub myself purple, I wash my clothes in scalding water. I wipe all the surfaces I have touched. And still I cannot make myself hug her.

I am not afraid of death. My resilience arrogance runs high. My acceptance of death as an absolute reality of this dimension remains unshaken. 

I am not afraid of being isolated. My solitude is my treasure, and my friends always, always there for me.

I am so privileged and fortunate to feel anything but gratitude even during these times. 

But I am so afraid of living in a world where I don’t hug my child anymore. 

xxx

PS: The gloves used in this image will not be wasted <3