Stuck in a Loop

 This morning I read an article in The New York Times titled, 

Heads Up! A Used Chinese Rocket Is Tumbling Back to Earth This Weekend.

Basically, there is a 10-story, 23-ton piece of rocket tumbling out of control in orbit, expected to fall to earth in an uncontrolled reentry on Saturday or Sunday. It's traveling at 18,000 miles per hour and a change of mere minutes can shift the debris (such a polite word for a 23-ton piece of anything) by hundreds or thousands of miles, so it's impossible for them to be able to tell where it's going to land until...well, until it's a few hours away from landing. 

I don't know how many of you read this blog on the regular and remember what exactly it is that you read, but let me quote a post from July of 2020 real quick:

"It's July! We made it to July! 

Maybe you're like, whoa, Suzy, none of us thought we weren't going to make it to July; did you think we weren't going to make it to July?

Well I don't know. Kind of? It's been one of those years, and you can't tell me it hasn't. I had a dream the other night where I looked up into the sky and saw a glowing ball of fire headed straight for earth and I knew we were going to die, and in the dream I just sighed as though I were a little disappointed and calmly said to Barclay, "I'm not even surprised, with the way this year has been." Like 2020 was my disappointing teenaged child who had, yet again, failed me in some major but not unusual way.

And then we just stood there with our arms around each other and stared into the huge night sky as the ball of fire grew bigger and bigger...

So my subconscious is, like, over it, right? My subconscious is like, WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE AND I'M NOT EVEN GOING TO BE SURPRISED JUST TERRIBLY, TERRIBLY DISAPPOINTED IN YOU, 2020.

But look at us! July!

Okay! 

So now that I've jinxed us good, on to the blog post..."

I still think about that dream often (my dreams are always extremely vivid; I remember them afterward as much as—or better than—I remember actual events). We were standing in this crumbling ruins of something that felt familiar but was now unrecognizable, as though whatever was coming had already come and we were stuck in a loop of anticipating terror and beholding destruction with no space between the two—which probably accounted for the subdued reaction to our imminent danger. The feeling was less, "WE'RE GOING TO DIE!" and more, "Welp. Here we go again."

And I don't mean to be dramatic (it's my default setting; I can't help it) but if this isn't the perfect metaphor for this past year or so, I don't know what is. It's been a year of feeling like we've just lived through something big (and I'm not talking about the virus alone, but also the debris: financial damage and relational damage, loss of trust in things and people and tensions that have finally and fully split into gaping chasms) but also like there is always something terrible on the horizon. Not something new though, just more of the same. Standing in the ruins awaiting our demise. 

So.

All that to say? I don't anticipate being smack dab in the middle of the Long March 5B rocket debris' uncontrolled landing path, but if I am then, I guess, let it be known that I KNEW IT LAST JULY. This is what blogs are good for, I guess—saying I told you so if you're too dead to say it yourself. 

Happy Friday!