regrets

love in the time of corona

i am officially lodging a formal complaint. i want a refund. the experience was NOT as advertised. i am tapping out. time to self destruct and re-spawn.

i thought this was America. i thought i was guaranteed life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. i always ate my greens and aced my standardized tests. timing has never been my strong suit, but i never thought i could possibly fuck things up this bad. it’s April 2020. i’ve posted maybe four (?) substantive blog posts. i haven’t had sex in 9 months. i’m 25 living at home with my parents and i’m not allowed to leave the house. i stopped drinking weeks ago because the side effects of chemo make me feel like i’m on a permanent comedown. angst, social isolation, sexual frustration, and sobriety? i’m having serious middle school flashbacks.

for someone who was already feeling ill, ugly, and lonely, a quarantine is the worst kind of complication. everything negative feeling is only amplified. you feel desperate after a few weeks at home? man, i’ve been stuck in here for eight months. communing with friends is out of the question, let alone dating; i haven’t been this single in 4 years. and i’m beginning to worry that i actually prefer being lonely to dealing with getting to know people. isolation begets itself. i am averse to reaching out, because i don’t feel as though i have developed an adequate rapport with anyone to merit their time and attention. i am a black hole of neediness with nothing to offer. i never called. and i will wait weeks to respond to a DM or text message, petrified by anxiety. i’ve spent most of the last few months in bed. i haven’t been writing because i haven’t felt my story is worth telling. i am not someone who should be heeded. i have no credentials. all i have to show for are shitty opinions. i can’t think of anyone who would care to hear about it, in spite of encouraging messages from (mostly) strangers.

i expected more vomiting. i just ended up feeling really fucking bad.

 my dad always insisted the secret to punctuality is always planning to arrive early. you must expect the unexpected, provide yourself with enough cushion should anything happen. because something usually does. things never go “right”. entropy. the standard is chaos. leave it to me to cap off 8 years of Van Wilder-ing with a sudden cancer diagnosis. still, i was positive. Hodgkin’s wasn’t so bad. i would probably fine. i had my two dogs and my boyfriend. i would develop a new appreciation for life. 6 months at home with a medical marijuana card sounded like the vacation i’d always hoped for. by march, i was supposed to be on the upswing. i had hoped to get back to school by may so i could finally g.t.fo. of there. april was my chance to rejoin society and re-acclimate myself with the world. now i get 6 more weeks of winter.

i hate this timeline. i want off this ride. i missed the tunroff 3 exits ago.