the levels of loneliness
in march i stopped getting to see my crew, i left the job i'd been at since august 2017 and was ordered by the reality of highly contagious disease to isolate like i'd never self-isolated before. i could feel the chemicals in my brain shifting, surprised at how different seeing a few people i love some of the time feels than only seeing new co workers in crisis mode and my roommates and their shitty social skills, oh and someone's girlfriend who basically moved in without asking. but even then, the extended crew reached out from the west coast and wyoming and chicago and nyc and from denver too, michelle and hill and kyle on the east side, anna and courtney on the west side, just simple texts or a flood of memes. i hated zoom and 'going live' but i tried cocktail hour with liz and lu and laughed a lot. in some way i felt safer in my network's invisible support in april than i did in february. half of my coworkers were working from home, the other half were split in half again rotating shifts to cut the contagion risk down, and i was really starting to work well with like the ten people left over, enough that yesterday i left work beaming with pride. but a supervisor moved to slc a few days ago and today on the first day of a shift towards people going back to normal scheduling, the other supervisor got fired. i was working with him and 3 other people i hadn't seen since march and he was there for an hour or two then packing up his shit, leaving with his puppy. i was tired and got more and more tense and then fucked up in front of the new coworkers and felt so ashamed for no good reason, just the lack of stability grinding on my nerves, watching people who had worked with him for years try to keep it together. i could tell my manager had cried. i didn't ask anyone for the scoop and no one told me. i felt slow and embarrassed enough that i wept when i drove away and then on my bed, really let myself cry it out. i hope i can do this job. i want to do this job and i want to be good.
in may, negotiating moving into my first one bedroom, how have i allowed myself to live with people awful people for so much of my life, it feels so humiliating, and i'm moving towards my own space like a pure and serene glow of warm sunlight. some folks have said they'd visit my yard, and lu is going to lend me her copy of Normal People when she comes so i can finally solve the mysteries of that show that has bewitched me body and soul, Connell is the new Firth. i want to build my home's insides to be a place where i can warmly welcome friends and dates and family, in a way that was impossible in shared living spaces, my way. if this pandemic ever loosens its jaws. missing my friends goes deeper, it's been so long since i've seen my baby buddy max, recently he asked liz why she was dressed up like me when she was wearing a floral print, that kid really sees me deep and it hurts to miss his mind quickly building its pathways, his little face coming in to form.
now it is june and the constant lynching of Black people has pushed people to breaking. i think the idea of how hard Black Lives Matter fought on behalf of Eric Garner being suffocated, being forced to beg for oxygen, how that was years ago, weighs so heavy on George Floyd's neck, the cop's knee like 6 years of confronting police brutality with the chant I Can't Breath added tp 500 years of violence, colonization, cruelty. i see my crew fighting, advocating, i see some of my people figuring this out for the first time, i see so many lessons being shared, and then i watch a montage of police violence against protesters and i read the tweets and i fear for the future, i am so scared of how much violence will be thrown at my crew, the crew i'm so lonely for, the people i love and the people who i don't know but who i'll fight for, i worry about you and i am proud of you and i will make my small gestures try to count towards justice.
in may, negotiating moving into my first one bedroom, how have i allowed myself to live with people awful people for so much of my life, it feels so humiliating, and i'm moving towards my own space like a pure and serene glow of warm sunlight. some folks have said they'd visit my yard, and lu is going to lend me her copy of Normal People when she comes so i can finally solve the mysteries of that show that has bewitched me body and soul, Connell is the new Firth. i want to build my home's insides to be a place where i can warmly welcome friends and dates and family, in a way that was impossible in shared living spaces, my way. if this pandemic ever loosens its jaws. missing my friends goes deeper, it's been so long since i've seen my baby buddy max, recently he asked liz why she was dressed up like me when she was wearing a floral print, that kid really sees me deep and it hurts to miss his mind quickly building its pathways, his little face coming in to form.
now it is june and the constant lynching of Black people has pushed people to breaking. i think the idea of how hard Black Lives Matter fought on behalf of Eric Garner being suffocated, being forced to beg for oxygen, how that was years ago, weighs so heavy on George Floyd's neck, the cop's knee like 6 years of confronting police brutality with the chant I Can't Breath added tp 500 years of violence, colonization, cruelty. i see my crew fighting, advocating, i see some of my people figuring this out for the first time, i see so many lessons being shared, and then i watch a montage of police violence against protesters and i read the tweets and i fear for the future, i am so scared of how much violence will be thrown at my crew, the crew i'm so lonely for, the people i love and the people who i don't know but who i'll fight for, i worry about you and i am proud of you and i will make my small gestures try to count towards justice.