Hiding from.
Becka was working from home, and living with Ben, and while that was still a very unresolved, strange situation, there was a narrative there. Her life was moving.
Jihoon was as busy as he’d ever been. Even though the tour was cancelled, there was now a whole slew of other activities he, and the group, were focusing on.
GVibes were still putting out a new album this year, despite having only releasing their latest studio albumTracks of Transitionlate last year. This newest album was originally going to be released at the conclusion of the world tour. Now it was going to be released this summer.
Jihoon had also finally been given the green light to release the mini solo album he’d been working on for the past year. It was all but done, but ENT had delayed any marketing for it so as to not coincide with any of the group’s timeline.
Now his album – still untitled – was going to release in January 2021.
I couldn’t help comparing his life to mine. It was a bad habit, I knew, but when his life was so different from mine, I couldn’t seem to stop seeing all the ways his was better. More important. It was a scab I couldn’t stop picking at.
Even now, I could recite his itinerary because I was more involved in his life than I was my own. I was substituting myself, again.
I didn’t know how to be static. I didn’t know how to be at peace in the cracks of life’s big events.
The rest of the world was a ticking time bomb. Gone were the news articles about sourdough starters, and drone footage of dolphins in the Venetian canals. Instead, it was one long stream of numbers:
Hospital admissions.
Current number of infected.
Deaths.
And even when the headlines weren’t about the virus, it didn’t get better. People were marching in streets all over the world. Masks covering their faces, but the placards they waved screamed louder than their voices ever could have, crying out for justice, social equality. Raging against a system that had gone unchecked for too long.
It seemed that when the world was locked away, we couldn’t help but peek under the rug we’d swept things under, and we didn’t like what we saw.
Everything filled me with such a feeling of uselessness.
Even here, at home, I wasn’t really much help. Sure, I helped with the chores, and I liked to think I provided a modicum of emotional support, but past that?
I couldn’t take away Mum’s nausea with each new cycle of chemo. I tried giving her a foot rub last time she said she ached, and the pressure just made it worse. I couldn’t even drive her to the clinic, because Dad wanted to take her. He wasn’t allowed to go in with her, but he wanted to be close. Just in case.
If I wasn’t being useful, what was I?
It was that thought that drove me to the uncomfortable realisation that I had never learned how to be still, because I had always been striving for something. Which probably explained why I’d spent so long pursuing the music industry. I couldn’t do nothing. I couldn’t be nothing.
But I was never quite good enough.
I’ve never felt more surplus to requirement in my whole life.
Social media was a trap. A scrolling window into inadequacy. Everyone else in the world seemed to be doing something – even outside of marching for social justice – people were using the lockdown to learn new instruments, discovering they were actually really good at sculpting with scrap metal, or doing makeup tutorials and getting sponsorship deals.
I tried making sourdough. The jar exploded. I already knew guitar, and I didn’t have any children to teach colour-coded life lessons to. Not that I should be teaching anyone life lessons.
The one thing I did that gave my days any kind of variety that didn’t involve doom-scrolling was the two mornings a week where my Korean tutor from Seoul and I had class over Zoom. Twice a week, I got up at 6 am to practice, and because I didn’t have much else going on these days, I was improving.
The world might be imploding, but I could now do a passable job at ordering dinner in another language.
So, that was pretty cool.
June
The crows eyed me from their perch along the fence. They’d retreated up there when I’d come outside, silencing their cacophony of caws that had seemed to bounce off the garden fences.
The truce wouldn’t last long. Eventually they’d either figure out I wouldn’t try to prevent them from reaching the food in the feeders, or they’d come to the conclusion that I was no match for them.
