Another day.

It's July 6th 2020. Tomorrow, I will be seeing K and her baby for the first time since she left for Victorica before Christmas 2019. She'll be one of the first friends I see since quarantine began in March. I've seen J for short spurts outside, but nothing lengthy or substantial. 

It will be good to see her and little A, who is about 6 months now I believe. Last time I saw him he was about a week old, and I laid on her couch with him on my chest while she ran some errands. He was warm and soft. And having him on my chest was very soothing. 

Tomorrow is also the first say that the local second-hand store opens. It's been difficult getting by without it since I try and buy most home goods second-hand. K needs to furnish her new apartment, as well as cloth the baby, so hopefully, the line up won't be too crazy. I expect it to be though. 

I had taken Mondays off for all of June, os this week is the first week where I go back to a full five day a week workweek. It's hard. At least I am not too busy at work these days, so I can breathe and walk the dog and puts around a little bit. End of year was pretty brutal, so I appreciate the slower pace.

I feel as if I am getting dumber. I haven't read a book in months. I have trouble committing to television and movies let alone anything more complex. I am trying to make a point of writing more often, but I am still in the stages of forced automation and not anything beyond that.

When I lay in bed at night, I feel as if I could write so much. I have these thoughts I always feel could be stretched out into something poignant, but maybe that's just the lucidity of incoming unconsciousness. 

The tedium of every day is something I need to plan for. I started setting my alarm in the morning again. For the last few months, I have been letting myself sleep in, but I can feel my days getting shorter and going back to work will get difficult if I just give up completely on acting like a functioning human. 

I am now on the last of my Effexor,  I am pushing it to one 37.5 mg pill every 4 days. I guess I will eventually go to 5 and maybe cut from there... Not too sure. 

It's difficult to say if I feel more depressed. I just feel depressed - but differently. I don't feel as clouded. I don't know what the major differences in me or in my demeanor are. It's difficult to really assess. I started weaning off right before the pandemic hit - and then I was quarantined and isolated - so those who would usually be in a position to comment on my mood are all at home, texting me. 

It's also been an especially stressful and depressing couple of months. I've been on social media a lot, following Black Lives Matter protests and the resulting increased police brutality and overall fuckery of Karen's and Trevor's and those who refuse to wear masks and those who like calling the cops on black people in public spaces. American politics as a whole has been a garbage fire for years now, but every day is a fresh hell. And Canada isn't perfect. Things happen here. There's always something.

Apparently, it takes me a lot of time to process things because this isn't new. It's been 4 months. I guess now the dust is starting to settle and I'm beginning to accept that the new normal is going to be working from home.

I have to think about what I want my days to look like, long term. Not just in survival mode.

Writing and living, but also not living.

I am on the last few weeks of weaning off of the drugs. I am taking 37.5 mg of Effexor every three days. I am trying to push it to more, but the last day (day 3) is pretty sketchy. I might need to wean off for longer.

It's been a few brain zaps here and there, and feelings of disembodiment. Sometimes I get dizzy or feel nauseous. But we've also had heatwaves on and off, so that could also be contributing to the feelings of nausea.

What a time to be alive.

I have been working from home since March, so we are coming up on 4 months. At first, it was just trying to figure out what was going on. But I am going to have to accept that this is a new reality. If I stay in my current role as a Financial Clerk, I can, in theory, expect to work from home in permanence now, or, potentially go into work only a day or two a week. This has benefits and drawbacks.

Only one friend has been laid off, but work insecurity has been an ongoing stressor. Friends with kids have had to live with their kids 24/7. Travel has been canceled, stranding one friend in Victoria with her parents, with a newborn. School closed. Daycares closed. Isolation. A web of stressors and pitfalls.

I have a job and a steady income, so I am grateful for that, but I also feel guilty about the job insecurity of most, and my feeling stressed at all, considering my relative safety.

I am grateful for my brother's solid employment as well - so our family is well supported.

I am grateful for my mother's health, and for our ability to afford our mortgage.

It's difficult to stay abreast of the news. Black Lives Matter protests are daily, and it seems every day there is a new name immortalized as a hashtag by police violence and murder. The sick irony of being "immortalized" as a hashtag for being murdered by police.

Living through a quarantine means also living with videos of people acting like utter psychopaths about wearing a mask in public. Why is it so difficult for so many to just be decent?

Today's dystopian news includes Johnson and Johnson's baby powder being a confirmed carcinogen that has been causing cancers for decades, and though it will no longer be sold in North America, will remain available everywhere else in the world, because corporations are without scruple. There's also a large number of elephants that have died and scientists are trying to figure out why. This is everyday life. Staying home. Working. Reading the news. It's difficult.

I am trying to take some time today, now to write. To journal and to just start a daily practice again. When work is slow, I can take a few minutes and write on my laptop (not the work computer) and try and just purge some of this internalized nonsense.

Before this quarantine, I had plans to start a new kind of therapy and to start getting my shit in order. Life is a mother fucker, and I should not be surprised.

Let me work from a prompt, this is my horoshope from Chani:

Over the past couple of years, what you’ve been able to eliminate from your life is as powerful as what you’ve added to it. What you said no to was hopefully a statement of affirmation to yourself.

Major advancements are a compilation of many small decisions over a long period of time.

With July’s eclipse in Capricorn and Saturn spending the last 6 months of 2020 here, the finishing touches that you are putting on your recent self-improvements are mighty and magnificent. In order to fulfill such a task, you’ll need to get incredibly honest about the parts of your life you’ve been too afraid to tackle. The patterns that you no longer want to repeat will now be pronounced. It will take a practice of consistent and considerable mindfulness to do so, but you are built for that kind of intensity and this is the moment to apply such talents.

I think what I find especially difficult is "over a long period of time."

I don't know if the story of my life is just one of the struggle of my weight and of my traumas. Is that all I'll have focused on? I'm 36 man. Thirty fucking six. I am approaching 40. Mid-life. 16 years of my life have been void of romance and companionship, sex and joy because of one fucking problem I cannot seem to let go of. Is this it? If I have not been able to move on for 16 years, does that I mean I am resigned to another 16? To the rest of my life on this earth - as just giving up and being unable to enjoy something enjoyed by billions of other people? 

This intensity of mine - it is isolating on a good day. I am hard on myself. How do I disengage from patterns when they are so well entrenched in my being?

Here I am, stuck at home, with myself. How is it I can love myself in some ways and hate myself so profoundly in others? How am I so disconnected from my body, and how can I learn something new? 

It never ends. There is no off day. It doesn't get any easier. Maybe it does, for some and those able to move forward, up and out. But I am not one of those people. 

Some days I feel like I am losing my mind with patterns of the same day over and over. The same problems, the same coping mechanisms. The same pains. How can 16 years have passed both so quickly and so slowly?

Are my only two options resolving myself to being lazy and fat, or re-committing to an eating disorder mindset that had me at a more manageable body weight? Regardless of the choice, my eating is disordered. My eating will always be disordered because I know it's all or nothing. I know where I come from and what happens to me. I know what my coping mechanisms are. 

I had to limit my eating, and workout every day to be large, nut not overweight. I will never be small, or dainty. Never overly feminine or slight. That is a given. I am big-boned regardless of how much fat I carry.

And if I were to lose weight - would the rest of my life be an obsession with keeping that weight off? I think the question is moot and the answer is no doubt a resounding of course. 

My weight is hitting me differently lately. At first, I was in denial of my body and my weight. I just didn't see it. Now I see it. I see it and I feel it. It is difficult for me to move. My back locks. I do not fit in many spaces. There are so many things I cannot do and places I cannot go.

I want to snap it all away. But this is my eternal fucking narrative.