I had a friend during the pandemic. A very close friend. The friendship developed over a year.

It ran into trouble. I got my fourth pneumonia. He said, “I need to return to my real life.” I should have walked away, but he had promised. “We will always be friends.”

The adult part of me knows that always and never are lies. But the small child connection to the Self wants to believe, oh so badly. The adult notes “That is a lie. You are lying to yourself, because I don’t believe always or never.”

The child has eternal hope.

A year later, abandonment. The adult is cynically unsurprised. The small child part weeps.

And my church is melting down. Me too. I wrote a peace poem and promptly got into a fight. Devil’s fall up to angels and then they fall down again. A peace poem sets me up to fail. The ends don’t justify the means and I may resign from the church.

The fallout from the pandemic is only starting. Everyone is grieving, everyone is hair trigger.

Peace you and anything you have lost in this Pandamnit.