Good Enough

First things first: I’m fine.

On December 29th, just before 6:00am, I called my best pal to ask him to take me to the ER. I had this weird lightning flash thing in the side of my left eye and it had got progressively worse overnight. When I called the consulting nurse line she told me to head to the ER immediately, do not pass go. There are two things this symptom indicates. One’s a stroke, the other’s a detached retina. I was not keen to go to the ER because Covid, and I was 99.9% sure I had not had a stroke.

I asked if I couldn’t just wait until the eye clinic opened.

“Nope. ER. Now.”

By 6:45, I was at the hospital thinking, “This is some 2020 bullshit, and I wonder if I’m going to have to have eyeball surgery, and what’s THAT going to cost me, and also, since I’m freelance, where’s the money going to come from while I recover, and… oh, fuck all of this.”

I did not have a stroke or a detached retina. What I do have is aging. Whee. Apparently the vitreous goo inside your eyeball, just like the rest of you, gets less elastic with age. The doc took a good look inside my not-so-elastic eyeball and sent me home with instructions for a follow up exam in a month. The whole thing took about three hours, door to door. I lost a day because my eyeballs were dialated as all get out and plus, I was exhausted from the stress. All things being equal, it was a good experience, though that stroke I didn’t have? I could still have it when I see the ER bill.

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In November 2019, I filed for divorce. I had started the process during the summer, but it turned out to be more difficult than I had anticipated so I had to start over. Once that was done, I decided to try online dating, which also turned out to be more difficult than anticipated. (Is it me? It’s not me, is it? Oh, god, it’s me.) Thing is, I had set these life changing wheels into motion and in spite of some heavy downsides, I was feeling optimisitic about the future. For my birthday, I booked myself on a much too long visit with my friend Andrew in rural Virginia. It was lovely.

I had been off anti-depressants for a while and feeling solid. I had a book deal in hand, inked at the very end of 2019. I had made the definitive move to end my marriage. I was going to the gym regularly and my pants were starting to fit again. I had good tech contract and a bunch of interesting writing gigs. Hell, I had started to sleep at night,  properly.  Everything looked great. And things that didn’t look so great? It looked possible that they could become great with work, work I had the energy for. I was full of fight and spirit and “Let’s fucking do this thing” energy.

Yeah.

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March 14th. That’s when everything stopped for me. Your date might be different, depending on where you live, what was going on, but for me, it was March 14th.

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The hardest thing about the lockdown has been how it looks so very similar to despression. A restless malaise where you can’t do anything, though in this case, it’s because there’s been literally nothing to do. Everything is closed or off limits due to my personal bar for safety. If I don’t get out of bed or get dressed in outdoor pants, it’s because there is (almost) nowhere to go.

One other thing: it’s been exhausting  how every gathering with friends is preceded by an extensive Q&A about who you’ve been with and when and under what circumstances. We’re all in an open relationship with each other now. “Who were you with and when? Did you stay six feet apart? Were you outside? Did you use protection?”

I have managed. I am still here, still getting shit done. I would not say I am thriving, but I am better than surviving. I am very, very privileged to navigate these times well; I think about that nearly every day.

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These are the good things this year and they are not small.

• Winter seemed a terrifying prospect, all of us stuck in our homes with no social lives, the darknesss of the Pacific Northwest an additional burden. In August, I spent money I could ill afford to have a shelter built in my backyard so I could socialize outdoors until the weather or circumstances improved, whichever came first. (My money is on weather, we suck at managing this thing.) This was, hello, absolutely fucking brilliant. I have had many good visits, some in the pouring rain.
• I had committed to exercising, for my brain as much as anything. I kept going to the gym where the protocols were easily stricter than those at the supermarket. Because I must have a reservation, I started taking whatever I could get, sometimes spinning class (held in the massive, freezing, basketball court), sometimes the pool. When everything shut down again, only the pool remained open as the bleach bath is apparently unkind to Corona. I now swim half a mile about three times a week. It is the one time in my day when my brain is quiet; lap swimming is such a meditation. My arms look amazing, but my it’s my brain where I feel the benefits of this half hour of lowered gravity, lowered stress. Did I mention my arms? I’m jacked.
• If you have to revise a manuscript, it is not the worst thing to do so in a year when there is fuck all else to do. Perhaps this was the one upside to my isolation; I was on an externally enforced writer’s retreat from March until late September. I am so resentful that this year has stolen my debut, even while I am still stunned to see that I wrote a book, got it published, and people seem to like it.
• Work has been a mess, publications I wrote for went under, I don’t know when they’ll be back. But my tech people rallied, hard, to find me projects and keep me employed. I feel valued in ways I did not expect. Tech culture can be so, um, libertarian? But no one wanted to toss me out into the job market, no one was all “Not our problem.” It’s weird when you’re contract, you get so little feedback. But this has shown me that my contributions have been meaningful and useful. I am optimisitic about what this means for my work for 2021.
• Biden won. More importantly, 45 lost. Nuff said.

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I am not convinced 2021 will be less stupid just because the calendar has turned. We will have an administration that believes in science, isn’t narcissistic and white supremacist. That’s a good start. I hope they are up for the challenge of rebuilding everything we lost in 2020 (and since 2016). I don’t want to hear any “Now’s the time for unity” garbage; I am not seeking unity with dangerous anti-science racists. Furthermore, I hope we will start calling that shit exactly what it is. For far too long we’ve dismissed this stuff as “just a joke” or “economic anxiety” when it is fucking racist and oops, I digress.

I had a point and it was this: I think it’s going to take some time to recover from (waves hands around) all this. It’s going to be expensive and difficult and we’re going to have to make more sacrifices before we’re through. It’s also the right thing to do. Stay home until we’re vaxxed. Put the safety of those in public facing jobs first. Hold our government accountable; they work for us. Speak up for what is right even when your voice is shaking, and shut up and listen to those shaking voices; they deserve to be heard.

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I miss you in my kitchen eating waffles, and being crammed into a booth next to you at the bar and hearing you read in a bookstore and oh, there are so many ways in which I miss you. All of my choices this year have been so selfish; they are because I want to hear your band play in a dive bar and I want to go on coffee dates with strangers and I want to sleep on your living room couch when I come to visit and I want to hug you when you drop me off at the airport to fly home. I want to embarass you when I dance at  your wedding and I want to slide my plate across the table to you and say, “OMG taste this, it’s amazing.”

I want to live in a world where all this is possible again.

I’m pretty sure this is all on us.

Also, as this year ends, it turns out I’m… fine.