I had picked up on an illusion at some point in my life, that people in a time of grief became one. Huddling for warmth and connection under a blanket of silence and humility. That in the face of death, we might stand together. Be afraid together.

I had thought of candle light vigils to be silent things. People flickering like the flames they held. Like a gust of wind could bring mortality, or at least the chill of it. I had expected somber, grieving, scared, people. Maybe grateful, or inspired as well.

I did not expect chatting, laughing, bustling people. People who moved no slower than they do on the street on the way to work or school. Like bees in a hive of Instagram stories and #grief, the bodies on the supreme court lawn that night buzzed. Thousands of voices filled the air as if hoping to drown out the moment, or at least leave it gasping so that we may breathe.

Still, the collective grief could not be shaken. I just could not tell if it was grief for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or for us. Ourselves. For various reasons both private and public. Both at home and on the news. Our sadness and anxiety and feelings we do not have words for that vary severely in volume and experience, but that each of us understand, at least a little bit. The buzz within us cannot be quelled. Or maybe we don’t want to quell it. If we did we would have to hear silence. And even in mourning, even in death, we run from that silence faster than our legs could ever carry us. Our minds buzz late at night. Our hearts buzz to the fastest beat.

And that buzz does not let us stop. It does not let us stop scrolling. It does not let us stop rolling. It does not let us stop watching, It does not let us stop smoking. It does not let us stop fucking. It does not let us stop feeling any and every feeling. Except for the feeling of feeling alone.

And so even in the one moment, where we might be morally obligated to just pause, we are unable to do so. We can show we paused with a boomerang of candles and flowers in front of the Supreme court. We can do even more! Truly put on a show. And I know so many of you have judging by the stream of D.C.’s unrelenting white feminists on my timeline, shoving the word “VOTE!” down my mouth with a refreshing chaser of dead RBG fan art. And, of course not without a vague caption about how we must vote to protect the marginalized populations of America, accompanied by comments from fellow sorority sisters commending this “bravery”. All or most of the people in these social media interactions say “Black lives matter” but barely acknowledge Black or brown people on campus. They say “believe survivors” but party with and continue friendships with known abusers. They ask on my timeline, “Why don’t you care?” and I wonder if they put this thought in their Instagram captions, in posts soon to be archived and deleted, to avoid asking themselves this very question in the mirror.

But oh, at least you paused, right? You showed us that you stopped and posted. That you care. That you went to RBG’s vigil and took up space alongside hundreds of other people who arguably shouldn’t have been there, including myself. Because we know we did not mourn at that vigil. We did not even pause because there was no space to do so.

We made it that way.

I stood there and looked at a formation of candles in the shape of a heart. In the flickering light, I felt the buzz fade away. There was a letter to Ruth Bader Ginsburg from a little girl, thanking her. It was written in Crayon, I forgot those existed.

For only two minutes, I reflected on the multifaceted woman that she was. Not someone who would be canonized in my mind, but someone to be learned from, in strengths and weaknesses. For a moment, I felt sad. And in the very next moment, all at once, I heard the buzz again. It was crushing, Caving in on thought and feeling as if to usher my mind on to the next numb thing, dragging me back into the artificial light.

I look back on that moment of sadness now, and will admit that it was not sadness for Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She was not a central figure in my life. Contrary to almost everyone I talk to who has been deeply and unfathomably impacted by this death, I have not. You lot must have a deep affinity for emotion that I do not possess. I didn’t know you could so truly love someone you never spoke of or gave much thought to in all this time that she was alive. I suppose I was wrong about that too, yet I do not feel bad for not feeling as bad as you clearly do.

But despite my clear absence of morality, I do know that she was a complex and extremely intelligent woman. She was flawed and she was gifted. She made decisions I did not support, and decisions that I did. She was a woman, a mother, a person, who like any in their death, deserved a pause. Some respect. Some silence. Or at least I think so, you may very well disagree.

I thought it was odd, that you gave her this silence for the course of her career, but deprived her of it in the moment that we had gone to mourn her passing. This is what made me sad for that split second.

The fact that we had to prove so badly, that we are good people who care about the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that we brought the buzz of the everyday onto grounds that did not need to be shaken that night, Onto the few people who had gone with thought and intent for closure. Who had brought rocks and flowers and candles. Who sat and searched for quiet amongst the reverberating hum of our selfishness.

We are so hell bent on moving that we will move anywhere, and over anyone.

Taking up space at a vigil, on social media. Making statements from a moral high ground that are contradictory to every day behaviors. Pouring care into posts but not into people. Being more focused on maintaining the image of kindness than being kind.

Keep on moving, you tell yourself. Because if you stop, it may be frightening what you find.

What I find is that very few people care, and very few people pause. But many are quick to act like they care, and then wait for the applause. And you act so well that even you believe it. You become the appearance that you sought for. You become the good person that you want them to know you are.

But appearances are hollow. This will always stand true. You should not reflect your appearance, your appearance should reflect you.

And the candle light vigil was exactly how it appeared on the news.

Touching, yet numbing.

Real, yet performative.

Momentous, yet the exact same as the buzz of every day.