The Real Treat
By Holly Brians Ragusa
This Halloween or Samhain, whichever you honor, the real treat for me would be to lose this constant feeling of fear. To be able to shrug it off like a spooky costume knowing there is nothing to be scared of beneath. Unfortunately I’m more afraid of what really is beneath, what lies under all of our masks. Our collective reason was masked in personal agendas well before this pandemic forced us to wear one.
Yes, I’m afraid, and not from the typical terror associated with this time of year. Certainly, many of us will have a hard time enjoying this holiday weekend with such a pivotal event looming next week for our country. Unlike a good fright in a funhouse, there is simply no house, or country large enough to contain this level of fear, because it won’t end on Tuesday after the election, no matter the winner. Where there are winners, there will be losers and I don’t know who to fear more.
The gloating and the mourning will be severe. Our deeply divided country is unlike a horror film. It isn’t fixed when we turn off the TV, even when the ads stop and we’ve recycled billions of flyers from this election. This division is a dread upon us all and 2020 has laden us heavy with the weight of it. The world we occupy today seems no less scary than medieval days of mob mentality and pitchforks. We didn’t learn from them or leave them in our complicated history.
I’d like to trust my fellow citizens again, and believe that they trusted me not to hate them or injure them in word or deed for their beliefs. And yet I don’t and they won’t. You see, the trick to trusting is you have to be given reason to.
I’d like to go into this odd and lifeless Halloween unmasked, with more mirth and positivity. It simply isn’t in the cards. I’ll dress as a witch as I usually do, and stay home, no parties for my house this year. Must be because I buy into the hoax of safety for my fellow man that I won’t gather and spread a virus that by some standards isn’t enough dead to worry about. As the veil thins this weekend, we will see the denizens of torment and torture seep further into our culture, our homes, our minds. What could be more scary than to torment others for the audacity of beliefs that differ from our own? We will feel haunted by our country’s history and future, become the scariest versions of ourselves and those kinds of masks don’t come off.