Remember when so much of the internet was blogs? I don’t mean the kinds of blogs that are still popular – blogs with a purpose – recipes or knitting patterns or DIY tutorials. I mean the kind of old school blogging that was personal, mundane. Livejournal or blogger.com style blogging. I keep thinking about writing, then thinking no one will be interested because I don’t really have anything to write about. But I’ve always find the minutiae of other people’s lives interesting, simply because it’s different from the minutiae of my own. So whatever. Here I am, blogging.
It’s a special, delicious misery to feel winter thaw into spring through an open window. It never got that cold here, but the air still had that sharp it-could-snow smell to it, and the sunlight turned thin and gray. Now the birds have come back, and I have all the windows open, and I can hear kids playing basketball down the street again.
(I wrote that a few days ago and now it’s gotten cold again. Joe, our landlord’s handyman, comes to fix our sink and asks me if I’m ready for summer. I joke that I was ready for spring but it turns out it’s still winter here. I’m in a sweater and he’s in a t-shirt, no jacket. It’s 47 degrees. We wring a good few minutes of conversation out of this typical Pennsylvania March. He replaces part of the drain pipe and leaves. I clean up the floor under the patched leak and do half of the dishes and go upstairs and lie down.)
I’ve found that I feel pretty much okay, symptom-wise, if I never leave my house. Staying inside for too long makes me feel like I’m slowing losing my mind, but I’m more or less functional. I haven’t gone outside to enjoy the weather when it’s nice, even though we technically have a backyard – a patch of concrete with a beaten up little table and chairs. The chairs are too small to curl up in, and I can’t sit fully upright for more than a few minutes without blood pooling in my legs. It’s irritating.
I don’t really know what to do with myself. I sleep for 12-13 hours, so my days are short to begin with, but it feels like they’re just sliding past me and then it’s night again. I do the crossword puzzle every day with my first cup of coffee. I read a critically acclaimed novel that I found mildly disappointing. I wade through the afternoons then turn the TV on for Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. I find Wheel of Fortune kind of annoying, actually, but it comes on after Jeopardy here so it’s become wrapped up in the routine. If the 8:00 movie on TCM interests me, I watch that. Sometimes I stick around for the 10:00 movie too. I haven’t been particularly interested in any shows lately, and don’t know what else to do with the hours until bed. Sometimes I watch reruns of Law & Order. Sometimes I flip between all my streaming apps and click something at random from my recently watched. It all feels very pointless.
I have a month left before I leave Philadelphia indefinitely (that’s a whole other blog post), and I’m just not doing anything with that time.
My disability limits my active hours, so there’s really not much that I can do, but then I still have all that time left in the day. And I hate this feeling of idleness, directionlessness. I know that more than anything my body needs rest. But rest can be excruciatingly boring. And the feeling is more pronounced when you can hear the city waking up from hibernation around you. My neighbors are coming back out to their stoops. The parks are filling up with children and parents and retirees. There is always music somewhere. I remember how it felt to be part of the low roar of springtime and I miss it more than I expected to.
Any chronically ill person will tell you that when you get sick, your friends will leave you. It isn’t malicious – often it isn’t even intentional – but that doesn’t mean it isn’t cruel, and that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. I think a lot of people just don’t know how to look at me now that I’m so much less than I was. Especially since my particular illness is a reminder of everything they’re trying to block out – the looming threat of pandemic, their own fragile good health, their failure to live up to their professed values (interpersonally or politically or both). A few friends have stayed. A few came back. Mostly they’ve faded away. I spend a lot of lonely days sitting by my window.
A few years ago, it would have broken my heart to leave Philly. It’s the only place I’ve ever lived as an adult. It’s the place I chose for myself, where I started to build a future. Where so many people I loved lived. Now being here just feels like a constant reminder of everything I can’t have.
There are things I would like to do to say goodbye. Long walks I’d like to go on, people I haven’t seen in years. Instead I’m packing my life into boxes, working in tiny bursts to avoid triggering a flare. I’m watching the days pass. It is what it is.
There are good things, too. My roommate and their partner feed me hasselback potatoes and miso pasta and stewed eggplant. TCM played All About Eve and It Happened One Night back to back. I got a kind email about a play I wrote five years ago. My sister is coming to visit. I spent hours on the phone with a friend, and the time slipped by but it didn’t waste away. Mannequin Pussy dropped a new album.
I finally finished the sweater I’ve been crocheting since January. It’s blocking on the floor right now and my whole room smells like wet wool. I’m reusing the yarn I bought for the first sweater I ever made, which was a wonderful disaster where I learned a lot by doing almost everything wrong. I ripped all the stitches out last summer. The yarn is from two different dye lots, so the new sweater is very noticeably two different shades of brown. But really, who cares?
It’s spring, and it feels like winter, but I’m sure in a few days it will feel like spring again. C’est la vie, etc.
always like to read your thoughts. the internet is all vlogs now hahah (versus blogs).