guess who's back

[Glides]

[content warning: everything idk, but i don't think anything will be too bad]

my computer conked out, i'm using a new laptop. long story.

i moved out. i'm living in an apartment about half an hour away. i'm working at a nonprofit. the first half of the year was creatively productive, not a drip since the process of beginning the new job (which is a fellowship, because of course my first "fulltime" job in three years would have a technicality).

person who ghosted me reappeared. they have HSV, but luckily told me before anything happened. did explain why they refused to kiss me on our first date. they want me to get tested for it since if i have it (i probably do) then we can fuck. i haven't gotten the test. my sex drive is damn near zero at this point. very funny that a person who's genuinely out of my league shows up and i'm so depressed that it would be better if they didn't want me at all. like jesus christ, it's kind of terrifying.

randomly hooked up with a person who previously had a fling with my other (and more significant) partner. only once though. and we didn't get far, so to speak. still counting it. they're off in alabama now so that's not happening anymore. there's been fits and starts but nothing with any other person has progressed to reality.

was supposed to have a roommate, who was one of my closest friends. we went on a trip to the blue ridge mountains together, where she and her boyfriend abruptly began violating every covid safety thing you can imagine. after being hospitalized twice over that shit and getting a BIG OLD BILL (still feeling that one more than the disease), i was not about to fuck with that. we got into a bad fight, she dropped out of the lease, had to move to another complex. she's been texting me again as if nothing happened but ignored me for almost two months and had most of our mutual friends do the same. the minute she was vaccinated, she decided the pandemic was over. that hurt worse than anything else that happened during the pandemic. out of that entire social group, only one person (my closest friend of the bunch) has taken my side. everyone in the group is vaccinated but they want to go out to parties and restaurants. recently their socials show them not being stupid anymore so i guess that phase is over. still fucking furious at most of them for betraying my trust like that. i am twenty six years old and when i first started posting here, i'd just started college. i am far too old for that shit.

abruptly had an offer to pitch my script to a small streaming service (not netflix/amazon/hulu level stuff, i'm not that cool). i was rejected. the pilot i filmed last year was sent to a producer, who has yet to respond to it. i could be potentially working post on three shows in the next year, bt there's a huge emphasis on "COULD." my remaining friend from that group, who is the well-connected one, describes the process as "excruciatingly slow and then all at once." i'm too tired to give much of a fuck anymore. i help deliver produce to food pantries and do inventory with one company and tutor kids virtually with the other. it's whatever. i just want money. i've got that right now. they're not mean. they're not demanding or making me do anything that isn't safe. i officially resigned from the teaching job and they're fucking furious. fuck them. i stopped working for the museum because they stopped doing all their virtual shit at once. i'm editing a podcast for someone my partner almost hooked up with. i worked on post for a single episode of a network tv show (i was not the one in charge and it is also for a much smaller channel). i've been writing copy. i do all sorts of shit. i don't know if i'm good at any of it or not and it doesn't matter. i keep waiting for the bottom to drop out. me and my parents have gotten along much better since i moved out. i can't lose that but i'm scared every moment of every day that i will. i don't think i have many friends anymore. i feel like too much work. i wonder if i should reach out to people i fell out of contact with.

i wish i could create something again. i miss when i could do that, even when nobody read it (which was every time). i miss my exes. that's apparently normal. i miss the people they could've been as much as i miss who i could've been. i miss the friend i tried to date for like a week. i miss her a lot. i tell my partner that and they say the same about some of their exes. it's weird to just admit attraction to other people and have that be okay. neither of us really trust each other. i randomly said i was in love with them and i guess i mean it. i don't plan on marrying this person or anyone. it takes all the pressure off. i assume every day is the day we break up. i'm too tired to care. i went from a pretentious film school brat to working for a nonprofit watching masterchef after work in a half conscious daze. the cinephile in my head screams at me for only being able to feel safe if i watch gordon ramsay in footage from ten years ago cuss out some redneck guy for not knowing french cuisine or some bullshit. fuck off, ramsay, the pasta isn't that bad. i'd eat it if i didn't have a gluten intolerance.

someone gave me shit for supporting reproductive rights and said i'd change my mind if i'd ever met someone who'd had an abortion and then i described the sheer amount of people i know who have had one (including one of my sort-of partners) and that person was silent. there was no applause because it was a virtual conversation after i said a mean thing to them on twitter. i don't even know what i am politically anymore. is this what being an adult is? is this the nebulous thing i've been running after? is it just monotony and then panic and then repeating and then getting high with your partner and fucking and only fucking them because lord knows it's scary to do that and i don't know how people do that so much. i'm on the asexual spectrum, they say, and i assumed asexuality was no desire at all as opposed to my really inconsistent bullshit. and i tell them about when i was obsessed with losing my virginity and after describing all the shit i would write about on here they would say "you treated that shit like an equation" and i was like "yeah" and they were like "that's kinda hot in a weird way" and that worked out. i'm stone cold sober writing all this, i just have really bad sleep apnea but the fuckwit doctor i went to won't give me a cpap machine unless i get my tonsils removed and my deviated septum straightened in the middle of a fucking pandemic so i'm looking for a new doctor. i have a cavity because i'm too afraid to call the dentist because i think they're not masking. i had a weird phase last year of forgetting to brush my teeth at least once a week and now i've been gotten for it. fuck that.

me of seventeen didn't care about any of this shit. they didn't care about what size poster frames to get to put decorations up on the walls as soon as i've got enough in the monthly budget, but only a few at a time since i need to pay my water bill. fuck this shit. i mean it's not that bad, it's just scary that i care about shit like this now, and i'm filling out an expense report to get reimbursed on my mileage for the month. my partner is on the autistic spectrum and they believe i'm autistic too. they explained my weird virginity phase as a hyperfixation as a result of my ADHD diagnosis, which i was diagnosed with. i was never treated for it. and just like i'll spend hours researching masterchef contestants and finding out which were republican, i apparently just didn't switch to a new hyperfixation. i probably went to film school over a hyperfixation just like my first sexual experience as a probably-ace person was bad because i equated losing my virginity with "curing" myself but nothing cures passive suicidal ideation, nothing. i wish i had the energy to socialize. i wish i had energy. i wish i could have one day where i wasn't afraid of getting fired and losing the apartment. i wish i could have one day if i didn't spend so much time being afraid that nobody liked me that i made it into a self fulfill prophecy. i wish i didnt create the conditions where i'm so afraid of dying and nobody noticing where i create a condition where i can die and nobody would know. realistically, none of you will ever know when i die. which isn't your fault, obviously, that's just my own shit. i'm so lonely but i don't have the energy to do the things to get rid of loneliness. i'm lonely when i'm alone and with others. nothing gets rid of the void, and i wish therapy didn't pretend otherwise. i wish i could interact in person socially with people without being terrified of getting covid again. it was one of the most vulnerable and painful things i've ever experienced. pain comparable to when i broke my fucking leg as a kid. but all over. it's better to isolate from the anti-mask goons than be around one for too long and want to beat the shit out of them as much as they want to beat the shit out of me for being queer.

i want to be more femme but i'm too lazy, because jesus fuck presenting as more femme takes so much effort. i don't know how y'all do that. i'm already at such a disadvantage. i want to be beautiful and ethereal like that for a minute. not like all the time because i want to be everything, but i don't want to be seen like this any longer. i don't know. it's all so much. i can't make sense of any of this. i always feel like i will always be denied. every "he" is like a screwdriver in the gut. i feel like i'm clawing for air at the bottom of a dirt filled coffin. i feel like i'm clawing out of my own body and trying to function inside this broken and barely operational thing. i'm 26 and my distended gut was not a beer belly but my fucking gallbladder imploding and rotting inside my own body for years on end. my stomach is flatter than it ever has been. i mean, i was and still am fat, but the belly was not part of said fatness. and everyone just ignored it! i ignored it! what the fuck is going on with these people? and my mother had to have her gallbladder and appendix removed too, and i've still got mine and i'm afraid at any second mine will fail. too much. it's all too much. i just need a fucking moment to relax. is this good? is what i'm doing good? is this what good is? i have no goddamn idea what good is. i just want to be good.

[Enail]

Glides, good to see you! Glad you're holding up and that some things are good, at least. Sorry about all the Covid shit - and a motherfucking bill for it!! You're surviving, you're figuring things out, I'm not going to make an attempt to define 'good' here, but I think you're doing a fine job at it all.