It’s 5:57am and I can’t sleep. This isn’t new, but it’s been progressively getting worse. There’s a strange collective grief and anxiety in the world, mixed with individual nuance and pain, customized to what we happen to be missing, worrying about, or going without.
It’s 5:59am and I feel like I’m in the wrong bed. I’m in my bed, it is the right bed, but I feel like on a Sunday morning I should be tucked under the covers and wrapped in the arms of the man I love. The last person to touch me almost two months ago. A lot of us are feeling a similar disconnect in our own ways. Touch starvation, and simultaneously being grateful for technology that allows us to interact from a safe distance, but not feeling safe from this ache that hits like clockwork as the sun starts coming up. I tried my best to embrace virtual social gatherings, I miss everyone, but I can’t bring myself to log in right now. I like my friends, but zoom and Skype and Houseparty suddenly feels like trying to eat when you can’t taste or smell food.
It’s 6:01am and I keep thinking about how I feel like I’m on borrowed time. This global issue doesn’t discriminate, every contact with the world indirect or otherwise (supply delivery) feels like a game of roulette. We don’t know how hard someone will be impacted until they face the threat themselves, if they must. Some of us will start that fight with deficits, some of us won’t make it. Having a lifetime of chronic conditions and knowing exposure likely being a matter of when instead of if, genuinely makes me worry my time will be up sometime in the next 16-24 months. Maybe I might make it, but I won’t make a full recovery. My mom won’t make it at all. She’s the only blood family I have. Even if I make it, my heart won’t.
It’s 6:06am and I keep going in circles. If I’m more likely to die within the next 24 months (and that’s an optimistic estimate without any real mitigation’s or vaccines on the market) why have I been completely isolated like this? It’s because I’m not stupid and we’re all (okay most of us) are holding out until there is an intervention. Doesn’t mean I’ll live to see it. But if I die soon, do I want my last days to be like this? I’d rather spend time inebriated, indulging in intimacy, and living up to my hedonistic nature. I’m not selfish enough to do it. Even if I’m hopeless enough to put myself at risk, a loved one depends on me to not fuck this up and I can’t take that away from her. Even if we end up taking a hit, it can’t be due to any mistakes or concessions I’ve made.
It’s 6:11am, I saw my bf drop off a present today though my window. The closest I got was one floor up, with glass between us. I can’t even explain how much that aches. I hate how common this is. I envy those who live with partners, who have pets, who aren’t high risk and who haven’t had their bodies betray them the way mine has betrayed me. Don’t mistake that for resentment, I don’t want them to not have those comforts if they have them. And I know they’re fighting their own individual battles. And sure my mom lives with me, but it took a full month of distancing before I gave her a hug, and I sat down to eat with her at the dining room table for the first time last night. And we all know familial and parental dynamics are very different from all the interactions and relationships that make life rich. I’m not saying that to discount her, I’m glad she’s here, I’m starving for the other kinds of loving interactions I just found in my life before the shift.
It’s 6:19am, this is still the wrong bed, in the wrong world, in the wrong timeline. But you know what would make this even a little bearable? Being in the right bed, then I could stomach being in the wrong world in the wrong timeline a little better. Self soothing fails after so long. I can’t fuck this up, and I can’t bare this.