Hoax

***** Trigger warning ***** never-ending pandemic *****

Things became really activated and not okay after writing my last post about how I was, mostly, okay. It obviously brought to the surface things that had lain dormant and there were bad dreams about K and young parts were very upset and writing lots and just feeling generally fucked up and attachmenty. And I’m so tired and work is a struggle and more than anything I want K, in-person K, and to be able to snuggle under a blanket on a cushion on her floor and feel her close by.

Mostly I guess I’ve also realised – again – that K and I won’t be meeting in-person in the Spring and going back to how things were before March, not that soon and maybe not ever. Even a viable vaccine is going to take more than a year to distribute, even if all goes to schedule and it’s ready for mass roll out from next summer. And our government is fucking up everything so it’s hardly going to magically roll out a vaccine efficiently. Or even get its shit together over test and trace. Plus we know future pandemics are going to start to come in a big hot mess from now on and we’ll be lucky if a new one doesn’t start before we’ve got a vaccine or treatment for this one.

It’s no good people saying that we have to learn to live alongside this virus and that in-person work will have to resume at some point, because it’s not true. K will – rightly – put her health, and that of her son’s first, above her job, regardless of how important it is and how much she misses face-to-face work. She is doing a good enough job for most of her clients remotely. She works 3 days a week now and I’m sure can find enough clients who will benefit from working with her to fill those spaces, whatever the medium. She doesn’t need to risk her health. Just as I know at work that what I’m providing is different – and inferior in some ways – but I am prepared to do it all remotely to avoid being very ill and experiencing long-term symptoms similar to those I’ve battled nearly all my life. So I don’t judge her, but I do know she is very unlikely to return to in-person work before we have a vaccine or, at the very least a very accurate and rapid test. And by the time that happens, what other threats could humanity be inflicting on itself that will keep us apart?

My only hope is for a fast test that I can buy cheaply or get prescribed and take once-a-week, just as I am leaving for K’s, to confirm I’m not contagious. I don’t even know how likely this is to ever happen or if it would definitely mean I could go back.

And I feel so selfish and privileged that this is my top concern during a global pandemic because so many are suffering in countless ways and all I am missing in my life is K. To be honest, if things stay as they are now I could cope as I am seeing enough people and Nina is in school and there isn’t much I can’t do that I would like to do. Obviously I am finding it hugely stressful watching the world fall apart and people’s livelihoods get ruined and knowing how many are isolated and in despair, and it’s hard wondering if and when I will be stopped from seeing friends, but everything apart from not being able to see K is okay, in terms of how my actual life is now.

What is wrong with me that I can’t do this work remotely when so many others can? It is leaving me unsupported at a time of huge stress and uncertainty and leaving me unable to finish the work K and I started, leaving it and me suspended and unable to move forward. I miss her so much but even if tried to work remotely again I wouldn’t get what I need from her, and I am giving up hope that I ever will now. I don’t see how things will ever change.