Dear Governor Cuomo

I used to love you, but I may need to leave you.

I remember back in the early days when you still made loving fun. Times were hard out there in America. The new Coronavirus pandemic was ravaging my home state of New York. I, like so many other Americans, was beyond alarmed at what I was seeing and hearing, and even more fearful of the unknowns.

On the news, I saw the horrible scenes of what was happening in New York City, a dystopian nightmare of refrigerator truck morgues and mass graves. I saw the leaked photographs of the early pandemic New York hospitals, the horror of row upon row of hospital beds in makeshift Covid ICU wards, full of people on ventilators, 70% destined for death. The treatments were barely effective. The infection rates were staggering. I heard the news that even children were being affected by Covid with a devastating Kawasaki-like syndrome. It would have been easy to fall into complete despair and hopelessness in the face of so much tragedy, chaos, and uncertainty back then.

But then in you came like a knight in shining armor on a big white horse. You rescued New York State in her time of peril, pulled her back from the edge of the abyss. Your compassion and leadership was spectacular, especially in contrast to the callousness and incompetence of the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic. You made intelligent strategic decisions based on facts and evidence. You held magnificent press briefings everyday.

Your press briefings felt like a genuine heart to heart, the perfect paternal combination of comfort and reassurance with firm rules and boundaries.

And then there were those photos of you on your motorcycle circulating the Facebook pages of all my middle-aged lady friends. Those definitely didn’t hurt your rise to the pinnacle of popularity. You were like some sort of rock star politician. Chelsea Handler wasn’t alone when she declared herself a “Cuomosexual”.

We weren’t just constituents. We were fans.

With bated breath I waited for, and then heeded your Covid-mitigating measures. You told me to stay home. I stayed home. You told me that when it was necessary to venture out that I should practice social distancing. I was always sure to stay six feet away. You told me to wear a mask. I wore a mask. I washed my hands. I sanitized. I got my nose swabbed just like you showed me. I went weeks without seeing my twenty-year old daughter and months without seeing my elderly parents. I practiced all the Covid-mitigation measures, just as you asked. Of course I did. I wanted to do my part. You had me at “flatten the curve”.

I have no regrets about those early days and giving you my heart and full cooperation. I have no regrets about following your directions, and making those sacrifices. It was the right thing to do. It saved lives. I never felt more proud to be a New Yorker than I did then. As that ominous curve flattened, hope was once again on the horizon — all thanks to you. You were exactly what New York needed and you were there when she needed you.

But, lately things have changed.

I heard your administration lied about the data on the nursing home deaths that occurred in the early days of the pandemic. That feels like a betrayal. I thought this relationship was founded on honesty. The deception about the nursing home data is a ship that has sailed. There’s no going back and fixing it. I don’t know if I can forgive you for it. But I understand it.

Those early days of the pandemic were extremely dark times. We needed you to make us feel safe, to make us feel like everything was going to be alright. I get that you had to make hard choices of which I can’t possibly understand the gravity. I think you made the wrong choice, but in my opinion, it doesn’t undo all the good you did if it was a single isolated failure.

There are also, however, allegations of sexual harassment. If they turn out to be true, I don’t think our relationship will survive it. Am I really surprised about the possibility of you sexually harassing women when I think about it? No, not really. With all that paternalistic bravado verging on condescension, it’s no great revelation that you might, on occasion, walk around feeling entitled and blurring the boundaries of both decency and law when a subordinate woman is in your hemisphere. But, Andrew, if that’s true, it’s definitively not okay.

I can’t have allegiance to a man who doesn’t have complete respect for women. You can’t be my hero, you can’t ride on that high horse, and you definitely don’t belong on a pedestal of Cuomosexual love if you lied about the data and you sexually harassed women.

Unfortunately for you, Andrew, I’m not like one of those blindly loyal Trump cultists. I’m not going to love my leader to the ends of the Earth like he’s the second coming of Jesus, ignoring all evidence of wrongdoing because of a sad and weak inability to handle a little cognitive dissonance.

The bottom line is that I love America more than I love you, Andrew Cuomo.

I haven’t made up my mind about you, though. The jury is still out. One thing you taught me is that facts and evidence matter. For now, I’m staying in limbo. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, the innocent until proven guilty, and suspend final judgement until the independent investigation on this latest allegation of sexual harassment is complete. But, at this point, consider this a trial separation.

We’ll see what unfolds over the next few weeks. I want to believe in your innocence about these sexual harassment cases, but I’m not willing to just sweep it under the rug for the sake of our history together. Regardless of what happens between us in the future, I’ll always have a place in my heart for you as the man that got me through some extraordinarily tough times.

Those adorable PowerPoints, and your special way of saying, “Today is Wednesday” will continue to echo fondly through the hallways of my memory.

But when it comes down to it, I think it’s time to be a big girl now. And big girls don’t cry. I’ll lift my eyes and face the reality that, despite for a while you were the man I needed you to be, there’s a harsh potential truth out there I can no longer deny. You might just be another entitled white male politician doing the things you’d expect an entitled white male politician to do.

I hope it’s not true, Andrew. But my eyes are wide open, and I may just be leaving you.