We can’t avoid life forever.
Two pluses of being a lawyer in this pandemic include, but are not limited to: (1) being able to extract money from financial institutions by threatening to sue; and (2) knowing about that one secret beach north of Santa Barbara where the DEA found your client with 2,000lbs of marijuana unloaded directly from a Mexican panga boat — and you still walked him at trial.
The smile, however, is illusory. Two minutes later, as the cool ocean water washed over my skin, I burst into tears for the third time in a month. I was so relieved, and simultaneously mortified, as I sank into the first wave, that I cried.
I cried for the lives lost. And by lives I mean of those whose body will never return and also everyone else, whose fresh new decade that could have been is already forever gone.
I cried for all the hopes and wishes and plans that have vanished because, it turns out, dreams are highly flammable and the initial human construct to combust.
I cried for all the missed moments in the sky and on the ground. With my friends and close to them. Hugging and touching and not thinking about killing each other with our necessary and life-giving breath.
I cried for not seeing my mom and dad until I don’t know when. If.
I cried for all the rage and anger and fury and disappointment and hurt and uncertainty and — above all — the total fucking helplessness, and the uselessness and the despair.
I cried because what if this was the last time I ever swam in my beloved Pacific Ocean? Because what if I get sick and don’t pull through?
I cried for my nieces who will have this memory from childhood until they die, and for the high school seniors looking forward to getting the hell out of their respective shitholes and going to college in New York City, as I once could not wait — could not wait another goddamn minute — to do. And also I cried for the law students who are graduating into an even worse and more diabolic economy than we did, or than anyone could have imagined.
I cried for the pieces of heart that we’ve all lost, the ones that’ll never grow back, at least not completely, and likewise the neverending trauma and the horrible absurdity and the living nightmare of going to the grocery store or the pharmacy or the gas station bathroom in Westlake because you are driving back from an incredibly selfish but oh-so-majestic moment on the coast of Southern California that you stole from the jaws of illness and death, just went right ahead and stole, even though you kinda felt you shouldn’t, really shouldn’t, because an instant of false normalcy isn’t worth it, not even slightly. Except that, yes, fuck the whole world for a second, yes, it totally is.
I cried over what we’ve lost and gained and lost track of and what we remember and cannot remember and forget way too quickly and promise ourselves we will never forget but have already forgotten because mostly we don’t even know what day it is and frankly it doesn’t matter.
And I cried for everything else that doesn’t fit in a stupid Facebook post. And my tears mixed with the saltwater. And I cried. And cried.
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I’m a lawyer and writer. This piece is from the Closer to God project, of which my most recent book — Jump: from Suicidal Depression to Skydiving and Reality’s Edge — is the first installment.
