"i always just thought you wanted to be left alone"
by pani (somdy and panda)
Friday January 26, 2024 00:03
I can't do this anymore. I can't do this anymore. I can't do this anymore.
I don't even feel like I can talk about it here tbh. But I feel crazy. I feel like everyone thinks I'm crazy. I am trying to protect me and my disabled roommates from getting sick, but I am so tired of being the only person in my social circles making risk assessments about COVID and RSV and all the other shit going around.
I feel like I'm in a different world from abled people.
I'm not even jealous of the way they're living and going out and doing things because I'm scared that they're going to hurt, disable and kill themselves. To me it just looks like cognitive dissonance. Or I guess to me it would be. The repeat infections are very serious and could be doing untold damage to their bodies. But they won't listen about masking for the vulnerable. They don't know they could be vulnerable themselves. They don't know even if they're not, they could be soon.
I've had the thought to break up with my partner about this. And that fucking scares me. We've been together almost 3 years now, I love them so much, feel safer with them than with anyone else, and I rely on them for... a lot. But I get scared that we might have different values in the end. They sometimes go places unmasked. Not all of their family takes precautions. Sometimes I feel like they talk down to me about this stuff. I wonder how much I imagine that feeling and how much is real.
I do worry about my approach to precautions sometimes. I don't want to take an all or nothing stance because the goal is mitigation, and the responsibility should not be on individuals, especially in this economy. I mean lol I can't afford masks right now. I've been trying to really stretch out the usage of the packs of N95s and KF94s I bought in September. I'm sure others are in a similar boat, but maybe have run out of masks or haven't bought any for a while.
I know public health fucked us all. I know they told everyone it was safe when it wasn't. I know I've had the privilege of time to do research on my own. I know some people just have to work and sleep and work and sleep and have no time to look into things so they have to trust what they're told. I know that.
But I got sick in 2017 and became disabled then. I had to leave school. I was homebound. Am homebound. No one has accommodated me so I could see them. Many never even checked in. And. I dunno. It just feels like I've been abandoned. It feels like no one cares about me. It feels like I could just easily disappear and never see anyone again and no one would bat an eye.
I often think about what my funeral would be like. I hate funerals because it feels like no one in the person's life cares until they die. I don't think the people "in my life" would care. Or at least not about me. They seem to only like the idea of me, the ghost of the pretty, quiet girl I tried to be in high school, who got good grades, who didn't make any trouble, who put everyone else first. When I stopped having the energy to look out for others and be the one to always reach out first, people stopped reaching out to me.
I do feel guilty because they are some that do. But I just. I don't know. I don't know. I definitely pushed some away and now they don't reach out anymore. And that's my fault. That's my fault. But it's getting harder to pretend I'm ok, to pretend I'm not multiple, to pretend that I'm not terrified every fucking day that I will get further disabled and the people I love will be disabled as well or further disabled. Everything sucks. Everything is scary. I want to be the kind of person who in that awfulness and fear can lean towards community, but there's a lot of work I have to do when I needed my community most I was abandoned. That's hard to overcome.