One Step, One Punch, One Round
Beleaguered
A couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to shamble and wheeze around inside the brand new Missoula Public Library and it is gorgeous. I was scheduled to participate in a grand opening event last year as a Featured Reader but of course that whole enterprise got the COVID kibosh, which is unfortunate. This library is going to be around a long time and I would have loved to be part of its debut celebration. Oh well. More work for the young and pretty of the future, I suppose.
I posted to twitter after my tour, and celebrated the library as something that would be "a shining light in our beleaguered town." I'm pretty sure it got the most likes of any post I've ever unleashed on that despicable hell-site, which is more a testament to the enthusiasm of our community toward the library than anything I wrote. Still, a handful of people mildly took me to task for referring to Missoula as "beleaguered," which surprised me. Not many, just enough to make me question the meaning of the word and go pry it out of the dictionary just to be sure.
But no, I'm right, and I stand by my assessment of our civic situation. To be "beleaguered" is to be surrounded, set upon from all sides, etc. That is certainly Missoula and it's no knock on the city. I love to take shots at my quasi-hometown and the more self-righteous among the people who occupy it, but it's still better than most places to live. The state of its beleagueredment (is that even a word?!) is no fault of its own either. Consider all this:
We are surrounded on all sides by counties who thumbed their noses at COVID, actively opposed measures meant to help make it easier for us take care of each other, and yet still happily flock here to crowd our stores and restaurants and everything else whenever they can. Those villains in Helena running roughshod over any idea of compassion or good will seem especially to have it out for us, and are actively pursuing measures to limit our ability to live the way we want to. County Commissioner Josh Slotnick (who also happens to be a wonderful poet and storyteller) eloquently points this out recently in this opinion piece. He isn't wrong.
It isn't all boo hoo Missoula, though. What if you are someone who lives and works here, but whose full-time job doesn't pay you enough to come anywhere close to being able to afford to keep living here? Where are you supposed to go? You probably feel pretty beleaguered. What if you're a family doing okay and the landlord kicks you out of your home because they can make bank selling to some out-of-state pirate who wants the "rustic Montana lifestyle" and thinks that just because they have more money to burn than us then we must all be rubes? You are beleaguered.
And what if you are among us miserable souls just trying to get through the damn day, who worked sick and hoped it wasn't COVID, who is trying to make that damn tenuous rent with two jobs, kids home from school, and gutless criminals in office bloviating about who deserves what amount of rescue money? Be-fucking-leaguered, man.
My heart has been hurting for weeks. For months. I don't mean that in a metaphorical sense, but literally. Some days are worse than others. It hurts because I'm beleaguered in so many ways myself, just like probably everyone reading this is, and it sucks. All the little tricks I use to not make things worse, or to not make an ass out of myself and then feel awful about it later, are getting harder to summon when I need them and I always feel shitty about that. I feel shitty right now, as a matter of fact. But this feeling arrives this time of year, every year, like clockwork. Who knows why.
Solace is found in strange places. Two or three of Sylvester Stallone's Rocky movies are among my all-time favorites. One of the best is one of the more recent ones, and it really isn't even a Rocky movie. I'm talking about Creed, where the character Rocky Balboa is actually a supporting character. But for me he is the most relatable version of that character of them all. The movie wrecks me in a lot of ways. Rocky is old, he's sick, his best days are behind him, he's either alienated everyone who ever loved him or they are dead. He carries such a weight of pain and sadness all the time, but he still tries to do the right thing. In Creed, he is training a younger fighter—the son of deceased former opponent/friend Apollo Creed—through his own hardships on the way to a shot at glory. Which is kind of what every Rocky movie has been about, that underdog-overcomes-and-makes-good trope but god, I love it.
The mantra Rocky teaches his protege is this: One Step, One Punch, One Round. That's how you get through a tough fight. One tiny moment at a time. We inch along, chins tucked so that on/off switch under the jaw doesn't get thrown, and we push through. Some of us need other help along the way—counselors, treatment, whatever it takes—but we can't lose sight of the idea of slow, steady progress. I'm writing as much for myself tonight as anyone else because I don't know who is reading this and where you are emotionally at the moment. But I figure it helps knowing that no matter what is going on, there are others in there with you.
We'll get through this constant state of being beleaguered in some fashion or another. One step. One punch. One round.
Or we won't.
We'll figure that out too.
Thanks for this, and all of the writing you do. The pandemic has really driven home to me in a deeper and more painful way how often people don't care for others the way they should. The whole nature of the thing - the fact that wearing masks is as much for others' protection as our own, that you can spread it asymptomatically, who lost what in terms of job/school/home/etc. - it's so uneven and I've watched so many people be so selfish. A friend of mine said of these people that they had "decided their privilege is essential." The ones that have bothered me the most in this are those people who are close to me, who didn't have all that much taken away (can still work, not sick, not alone, ok financially) but who aren't willing to give up stopping by the store multiple times a week just to get a certain brand of tortilla chips. I don't know how I'm going to forget that behavior in the aftertimes, whenever and whatever those are. My partner is currently in isolation with COVID that he contracted between vaccine shots one and two, from I have literally no idea where. And everyone assumes it's something he did, when we haven't changed anything, done anything. Looking back over the last two weeks, there were three outdoor, distanced get togethers with friends (the largest of these was three people) who have all tested negative, and one time that we dropped off of food for a friend's theatre company. So as near as I can tell he got it from going into a laundromat with two masks on his face. It bothers me to think that people will either read this as us not having been careful, or that being careful doesn't work. The reality is other people weren't careful and he's suffering the consequences. I'm grateful he had had one shot because he's asymptomatic right now and that's probably why, and I'm grateful that he's just locked away bored for a while instead of dead. And also this sucks. I guess maybe that's why all this came out here after reading your excellent post, which, thank you again for writing it.
One step, one punch, one round. I've been a worrier all my life, I'm trying to change my focus to the present. That helps. My heart hurts too, Chris. I'll keep fighting, someday we'll get a rest between bouts.