beep beep beep
Been quiet. I have to say this whole corona thing has been a lot illuminating. It has made me realize how fucking weak everyone is, to be honest. No, I am not going to be the source that tells you it’s okay, fall apart, crumble as much as you need to because everyone else is. Yes, everyone is, which means we’re going to have to buck up little campers, and be better examples.
Now for me, the inconveniences in life have never led me to think just because I want something to be true that it should be true. I have never thought just because I wanted something I should be able to have it at all. I cannot say I never questioned fate, the idea of God though I think that whole line of thinking is a sham, instead kind of leaning moreso towards Don’s thought process here which is…never count on a dead man to do you any favors. I have lost everything so young and so long ago that this whole exercise to me leaves me not uncomfortable in the uncertainty–I have learned long ago nothing is guaranteed. Nothing. Not happiness, not poverty, not family, not life, none of it. I learned a long time ago what it seems many are learning now:
life happens when you’re making other plans.
Now I don’t know that everyone else who has been through the heart shit and the coronavirus have such an opinion on things. Keep in mind this is year 25 for me so I have had a long long time to contemplate, fuck up, react, overreact, under react and yes, wish on a few occasions I was dead and didn’t survive. Mostly that was due to the financial burdens imposed on me living in a garbage can country which doesn’t see value in healthcare, BUT, the thing is now…now a lot more people will see what I have been saying about our health care conundrum and you would hope people learn a fucking lesson or two about it all.
I do feel pretty well prepared to weather the virus and the storms of baloney coming through surviving this shit–you have to lose everything to appreciate what little you do have, and I have lost everything many times. I wouldn’t wish this on everyone to have endured as long as I have, but now I guess everyone will get a tiny taste of what that is like. It’s not fun but the emotions are the same.
Now, the anxiety I do have is just for Don, still out of state. As of tomorrow it will be two months since I touched another human being or stayed in close quarters with anyone. When I say I have nobody, that is not some poor me joke, it is the truth. And he told me it will be another 4-6 weeks so that is even harder to endure. At the end of this all it might be what is it, 3 months without touching or being in too close a quarters with anyone–and to be honest besides January–we hadn’t seen each other but for 4 days in February. So it will be maybe 4 months at the end when I haven’t spent much time with any other human beings besides a few friends Duke made for me here in the complex. Those guys I have no history with exactly–they are just people who become familiar through repeated dog meetings. They are awesome, it’s not that. But we aren’t friends but for the doggy friends so there is some perspective there.
I have maybe 20-30 relatives in the state but since I had always been kind of estranged from them moving away from Colorado at 12—well, it’s more like the novelty of relations without any of the practice. All that aside, I spent all of my time for the first 6 years here with my birth mother and her family and her husband’s family. Has the corona thawed those relations out? Nope. And I do not care. They threw me away years ago and have continued on I am sure more than happy and I am sure my sister and brother are thrilled there is no more fake sister to take any attention away from them. Aside from that, if a pandemic can’t reconnect you, it would certainly seem most appropriate to let the idea of them die as a past tense experience in my head. I don’t wish ill on them, hell I wish ill on nobody in this life. I just don’t care and I cannot reserve space in my head for people who leave no space in theirs for my well-being or life.
Aside from that I am positive that once I told them it was in the paternal line that the fake relationship really stretched through to expose that it was guilt that made them include me because of the shit life I had because of not just the adoption, but the illness and the havoc it wreaked on my life. Once they realized they had no responsibility–I am sure it was easy for them to pretend I didn’t exist at all. Who knows what drives people, but I have had a ton of time to think and this is the only thing that makes sense. I believe I found a blog entry for the first time I saw her which was 2003–and we made it 14 years before she decided to torch all family protocol and send me a letter from a lawyer. I still am somewhat incredulous as to what an absolutely horrendous and dick move it was to not try to have a serious conversation or even a polite one first, but–those guys I am realizing never liked me or Don. My mother probably did a slight, but the rest of them thought we were garbage and put up with us because of her. All good, I knew this and Don pointed out a few times the obvious elephant in the room, but I was willing to do almost anything to feel I had some family.
Until that family sent me an eviction letter and demand for cash. Probably not the best way to learn they didn’t give a shit about me or anything else, but luckily for me, Don stepped up in a big big way and has been taking care of us and to be entirely honest—we did much better getting away from the stress of trying to play a role they wanted to fire me from as soon as I moved here.
This isn’t to say every relationship is not repairable in the midst of this–I have reached out to a handful of people who were close and important to me to check on their well-being and actually have spent more time on the phone lately with a customer from my travel agent job sitting in the middle of NYC than almost anyone, save Don. She’s a sweetheart and in her 70’s and we talk about a lot of stuff. She is a good mother-type figure and doesn’t spend time judging me and is just a sweet person all around. Between her and the letters to my grandmother in Arizona, well, I have a few older women I can confide in and keep in contact with–you might have assumed, and correctly so that I really do not have a ton of women I feel I can trust. Clearly I have known a lot of manipulative and mean women in my life, and I tend not to trust them and am always immediately suspicious of motives, manipulation and passive aggressive behavior—so it’s nice to have a few that I keep in some contact with since clearly I am not out there making friends all the time. Alyse was the last one I made friends with and I rarely see her. Brenda is thank god OK and not corona-ed anymore but she has a family and husband and children and I am living a quiet life on the outskirts of a reservoir with a big silly dog and a big empty apartment. Praying my husband makes it back home to me–praying yes, What else do you call wishing with all of your might for something to happen?
And that is really it. Yes I have filmed some episodes, and yes I have been working in the background on other projects. What the hell else would I have been doing since I despise sitting on my ass but doing better stuff? However, my anxiety about Don is somewhat paralyzing which means I barely eat and I sometimes do nothing I should. Just a few more weeks, just a few.
We can make it and we will.
