The corpse in this case is my relationship with a friend. Perhaps it's just in a coma. Perhaps there will be a miracle revival down the road. It's awfully hard to tell at this point.
The murder weapon in this case was conversation. My friend, the first good friend I made when I moved to my current home city, is an anti-vaxxer. I've known this for a long time, and since we disagree on the subject, we have in the past managed simply to avoid talking about it. Because how often in day to day life does the subject of vaccines need to come up? However, it's harder not to talk about in these days of COVID when a vaccine looks like a way out of hell.
We got together recently for an outdoor brunch, and it was then I discovered she also doesn't believe in wearing masks. Once again, we tiptoed around the topic. I asked a few questions but didn't get into pushing back or trying to change her mind. But in subsequent emails exchanges, even though we both agreed we need to avoid the topic, we just couldn't keep our hands - meaning our minds - off it. There was a very quick escalation when she said something insulting, the first time one of us had said something to the other that equated to "I'm right and you're wrong." I went downhill emotionally and realized actual damage has been done to our regard for one another. This topic, which might at another time have been dismissible as "I just don't see it that way" became toxic to the point where I'm not sure we will be friends again.
It says something about the hard, divided, upsetting time the country and the world is going through that a disagreement about something that doesn't even really directly affect a friendship can still take that friendship down to the ground and bury it. If a friend of mine had said they were voting for Reagan (in that era, of course - if they said it now it would be a whole different conversation) I might have replied "What for?" and wrinkled my nose and that would have been the end of it. But when a friend says, as a friend recently did, that he is voting for Trump, my respect for that person instantly and irreversibly plummets. He will have revealed that his world view, his sense of what is important, what he looks for in a leader, all of it is so distant from mine as to be virtually - no, not virtually, but completely and utterly incomprehensible to me.
I think that during this era when there is so much chaos, so much uncertainty, so much wrong, and so little feeling that we can control anything of what is happening around us, we as individuals are tending to choose our little square on the battlefield and then defending it with every fiber of our beings. I can't do anything about Trump's madness and ignorance and mendacity, so what I'm left with is to excoriate anyone who approves of him. I can't do anything about this lethal sickness creeping invisibly through the world, so what I'm left with is to rage at those people who won't mask up. It's the lowest kind of victory, but the only one available to me. There doesn't seem to be the tiniest hope of any of us changing our minds. Nothing on earth or in the stars could make me look at Trump with less than hatred, so if I won't budge, why should I think those of opposing views will? And since I know that, no matter how many facts, articles, videos, charts and graphs I throw at a Trump believer or anti-vaxxer she will never change her mind, all that's left to me is to stomp her into mush in my mind, focusing my inchoate rage and despair on her, or him, or whomever.
Several times in the recent past when I have eaten, I have felt an uncomfortable fullness, sort of a pain that's not quite a pain in my gut. I wonder if I'm giving myself an ulcer with the strain and stress and unhappiness of it all. No matter how many times I look at my own life and see that it is good and safe and generally lovely, I'm full of acid and depression lurks around every corner. It's on me to do something about that, and when I figure out what I can to do ameliorate this anguish, I'll let you know.
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