The Terrible Nothing Between Somethings

On  Tuesday, Nov. 3, I paid as little attention to the election as possible, knowing that more Republicans than Democrats would vote in person, that there would be a "red mirage," and it would feel like 2016 all over again. If I watched, I would go to bed with a heavy sense of dread and foreboding. 

So, I refused to pay attention and ignored it all, until the next morning, when I peeked at the results as reported in the Times.  

And for the next four days, until Pennsylvania called it for Biden, I was hooked. I kept a steady vigil of watching the incremental changes in fractions of percentages of votes in the battleground states of Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. 

When Biden won, those for whom it signified a renewal of hope for the soul of the nation and the survival of the planet were elated. 

I felt enormous relief, and a joy that seemed to bubble up from out of some dusty old bin where it had been safely stored. My threadbare joy, smelling faintly like mothballs.

Of course, I didn't literally expect Covid to lift like a fog, just because Biden won the election.

Or maybe I did. 

For a few glorious days, everything seemed brand-spanking new.

Until it gradually sank into consciousness  that I would have to wait until January 20 for Biden and Harris to be sworn in before they could actually take office. 

And though I wasn't among those fretting that Trump would succeed in his bid to overturn the election results, I have never suffered gladly at any time in my life what I refer to as the nothing between somethings. 

In 10 weeks, there will be something, but for now: nothing. And that nothing has come at the worst possible time. 

I have never been patient with the nothing, but this is the worst one yet. 

In Wisconsin, as elsewhere, the number of hospitalizations and deaths due to Covid are so alarmingly high, there is talk of hospitals having to triage healthcare for everyone. People who feel sick enough to go to the hospital may have no choice but to stay home. 

The nothing gives space to denial, and to the yawning gaps in understanding and consideration. It gives space to misplaced anger. Space for disinformation and lies, in place of anything substantive and real.  

A negative response, unresponsiveness, absence of responsibility. 

The know-nothing, knuckle-headed, nonsensical nothingness of nothing. 

Watching Covid numbers is the opposite of election results slowly reversing course over a few days. 

Nothing opens up to a microscopic thing that steals our breath and sets people against each other, like a parasite of the brain. 

There is no number too great to fill the vast open space of nothing. 

Hospitals fill up, morgues fill up, days get shorter, nights grow longer; as we wait for something to begin.