Bloggage 12 June 2020

Bloggage

12 June 2020

A Friday

By

Alexander Gordon Jahans

Today is a good day and I have hope so I think it’s time for a status report.

The wheel turns but the story remains the same.

The world today is messed up. It’s dark joke at this point that the apocalyptic scenarios keep queuing up to strike us in 2020. Fascists, a global pandemic, swarms of locusts, murder hornets, erupting volcanoes, the list goes on. 

My immune system is compromised so I dare not leave the house and the world outside is simultaneously bright, sunny and beautiful directly outside my windows and filled with police sirens and screams on a global scale. I feel as if I am under siege, trying to hold out against a virus that my government is too incompetent to deal with.

I should be screaming, I should be crying, yet oddly nothing has changed for me personally, if anything psychologically I feel in a better place.

There are challenges to be sure. The lack of a reliable supply of diet coke is stressful and my autistic taste pallete has been annoyed at not having the right kind of tomato ketchup but that’s hardly life threatening. Even the lockdown fever caused by anxiety over the pandemic and not being able to get out and do stuff has not altered circumstances too much. That might sound absurd to my close friends who know the personal problems I’ve been going through but nothing I have faced has yet crossed the threshold into being as bad as when dad lived with us and I was still at school. It does sometimes feel like living in a continual social cold war with the doomsday clock edging ever closer to midnight but even if it did strike midnight it still wouldn’t be as bad as my childhood.

I have an increased sensitivity to the feelings I do have so I do care about the hell happening to people outside my little bubble of relative peace. It does make me angry and upset to see that shitheads are defending black face while others are protesting for an end to systemic racism and a radical change to the way the police force is structured. I hate that transphobes are using the cloak of a warped understanding of feminism to protect their bigotry. I feel so sad and angry for everyone who has died because of the coronavirus and this government’s pathetic response to it.

Do not mistake my own personal feelings about my own personal situation for a disregard of the suffering going on in the world right now.

That said. I feel weirdly at peace in my own life. I actually think that’s why I have days when I wake up feeling anxious for no reason. I have been mentally clenching for so long and now I finally feel able to rest and admit the pain I’ve suffered so I can begin to recover from it. Which sounds and feels so fucked up but I think it’s true.

Little has actually changed in how I personally live my life. Since leaving university and being stuck in my hometown I was left without a real life social life anyway and since the diagnosis of Kallman’s Syndrome I have felt unable to work and the nazi stalkers have left me feeling under siege. The pandemic thus provides a simple explanation I can give to anybody to justify why I can’t work, have no real world social life and feel under siege. It provides an easily understood coat of pain to my messed up life. Even my imposter syndrome can’t argue with a global pandemic.

So much of my existence for the last five years has been about avoiding people, distracting myself from my problems and never leaving the house and now people understand. I don’t have to give multiple lengthy explanations. Everybody seems to grasp not wanting to be infected by the pandemic.

In a weird and messed up way I’m not even that mad in retrospect about facebook calling it ‘hate speech’ when I swear about white people being shits. The practical consequence is that I have stopped injecting myself into the narrative and remind myself to be calm and just let people hear black voices. The last thing the wo9rld needs is more angry white men.

Undoubtedly however a large part of the reason my current existence is easier is that I finally have the gaming computer I always wanted. It means I have been writing less but because I’ve been writing less I’ve been missing my walks less. The one thing I truly miss about going outside. (Don’t insist that it’s safe to go for walks. I’m immunocompromised, I don’t want to take the risk.) I have a taller desk so I’ve been able to cycle on my minibike again and that has meant I have continued exercise. I do however have a treadmill on the way and the perfect place to put it so I can continue having walks soon enough.

The storm has struck and it will be with us for a long time but for now I am doing alright. Now if you will excuse me skyrim special edition awaits. I am an Argonian siding with the Dawnguard and the Empire.