covid diary: day 85

Every week, there comes a point where I just don't feel like I can catalog one more awful thing. Usually I make myself keep writing, because I know that if I stop for one day, it might turn into two days, and then a week, a month, longer. Sometimes I ask Mike to do the writing for the day instead. But every week there's that point where I think I can't do this anymore.

And then I think of the people who literally can't do this anymore. The 108,000 people who have died from COVID-19. The untold numbers of black people killed by police. And I think of the people out there who have been protesting for 10 days now, and how so many of those people have been working for years and years and years for the same goal of justice. They've been largely ignored, but they haven't stopped fighting. They haven't stopped working.

But it's important to take a breath, too. To write that this morning I went to the pool again and I'm so grateful to be able to do that. And yesterday I held my great-nephew for the first time and remembered what it's like to be trusted with something so precious, even if only for an hour. Emeri is biracial, so I have the same worries for him that I have for my boys, but also another layer of worry for the prejudices he'll have to face that are just baked into our whole American experience. But at least for now, he only knows love and care. I wish I could keep it that way for him. Not just for him, for everyone. I realize that as a white person I benefit from this system, but if I could, I would tear it all down and build something that's truly just for everyone.

I would Tear. It. All. Down.

Nationwide cases: 1,872,660. Deaths: 108,211.