Let me spoil it for you at the start: I should be writing a novel starting today. I am not.
Instead, I find myself contemplating National Blog Posting Month as an alternate November. Again.
We are entering a third pandemic winter. Third. Not second. Third. And I am tired.
I am tired of this pandemic. I am tired of my life being small, of feeling like I can’t go anywhere or do anything.
I am tired of having a small risk tolerance. I’m tired of having to assess every single activity – from picking up lunch for carry-out to getting a haircut to going to the dentist – against the prospect of death not just for myself but also for those I love.
I am tired of the changes aging has wrought on my body. I’m tired of the extra weight, of my old clothes being slightly too small and the next size up being slightly too big. I’m tired of worrying about how everything I eat might affect my physique.
I am tired of not getting enough sleep, no matter what I do.
Exercise: Sleep poorly. Don’t exercise: Sleep poorly.
Hydrate: Get up multiple times to pee. Don’t hydrate: Wake up multiple times a night anyway.
I’m tired of not being able to eat dessert because sugar keeps me up at night now.
Since March 2020 the world has been simultaneously chaotic and static. Forces I can’t control, like SARS-CoV-2 variants and whether people in our local area are getting vaccinated, have been pushing my life out of shape. As a result, my life has gotten very small. So small, in fact, that if I leave the house more than twice it’s been a busy month.
My last two years have been insanely stressful. Let’s see there’s:
The whole living through a global pandemic thing
- Getting laid off
- Finding a new job in an industry that thinks I’m 15 years past obsolete
- On-boarding to a fully remote job for a company headquartered in another time zone
- With a team in transition from small and scrappy to almost double the size in 6 months without any proper process or scaffolding
- Did I mention the living through a global pandemic?
The thing I am most tired of, that I am terrified is a consequence of getting older and not of the insanity of the last two years, is feeling almost nothing.
Vaccines have taken away the true terror of COVID. I no longer have a panic attack when TheGirlFriend goes to the grocery store for the weekly shop. Fear has become a low-level background hum.
I have this mass of sadness clustered in my chest, yet I am incapable of crying.
The inequities of the world are being laid bare, exposed by the receding flood waters of white supremacy and capitalism. Climate change, something 20 years ago we were already 25 years too late to stop, is becoming a daily reality genuinely risking human lives and the lives of the rest of the species with whom we share the planet.
And I feel…numb. I can’t get angry any more about injustice, not like I did even 10 years ago.
If this is a natural consequence of aging…fuck this.
But the thing of it is, society doesn’t want me any more, not even my own fucked up corner of society.
Lesbian has become a bad word because so many people who refuse to recognized the humanity of others claim that label.
Kids in GenZ don’t know the difference between sex and gender – and yes, children, they are different – and insist that Butch isn’t a gender identity but is merely cosplay.
And still the LGBTQ community revolves around gender-conforming white men. So what have we really done to change anything?
I am menopausal. The medical establishment has relegated me to the dustbin, every complaint receiving the response of “¯\_(ツ)_/¯ because menopause!” with no thought given to how to actually make my life better.
I know control is an illusion but like every other absolute, that can’t be the whole story.
This month I’m going to rant and rave and possibly be politically incorrect. But I control the narrative here. And this is how I get back whatever shred of control the last two years have robbed from me.
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