Prose before hos

The most affirming word in the minds of forelorn lovers, separated loved ones; whether it's between working hours or actual miles between two people, soon is always arriving. 

For a long-time in the last 60 days, I hung on to that word, every weekend. "Soon enough," is when we were supposed to meet. Today, that tied into my Covid recovery. Third time's the charm so we can hope I recover soon enough; the marker that I once interpreted for the distance between our synced calendars is now a distant future for my recovery phase. There's peace and hope but there's also history. 

For us, soon was always incoming, every weekend as we worked our asses off. Now, soon is a year or maybe two. It took me over two years to go back to working out without killing myself and building my strength, and now the soonest I can do is "soon enough". 

I really do hope I'm happy soon enough. 

There's this thing, that I have heard all my life from friends' parents and then from mine (but never directly uttered to me) on how people seem to move on past a certain point in your life and you're left to your own devices, and this is where marriage and a partner can save you. 

It's also not as if I have a lot of pressure (or any) to address this. I've never once been asked to see someone for the sake of it or think of it, it's just assumed I'm not fit for it, and there's really nothing to fight there. It's cool, it's fair, we get it. 

All these past years, it's been rather easy. I've seen people around me get married, have babies, buy houses and all that and be unfazed in my presence. Maybe, this is where bar drinking comes in and I have never felt like I left the cool train or whatever it is, but going out and seeing people, doing things, pursuing hobbies, all that really aided. 

And yet, one year and a few months into this fuckfest of a global shitshow pandemic, and I now feel FOMO about this life I don't have (and possibly won't). 

People around me are moving on; I don't know whether this is an absolute urgency or a moment of reconciliation with the situation around us, but I found myself knee-deep in confusion planning bachelorette for two different friends from a group of four of us. That is to say, 50% of my circle is getting married in the next few months and I'm supposed to hide and plan these surprises without the brides knowing about their respective parties. For a group of people where half of them are getting married and the other quarter is in a foreign country, it is an awful lot of stress to bear. 

That's the fun part, my stress is a privilege to count on. I am not moving houses in between the predicted third wave, nor am I looking out for ways to discuss how I don't want certain rituals in my inter-caste wedding, and I'm definitely not worried about letting my friends know that they're not invited for the wedding lunch. I'm fairly simple. I watch a sport, I eat food, I watch TV and I write about it. I have no bigger ilks to think about, including what furniture can I take from one home to the other and what can I drop. 

That for me is where my FOMO begins. It's perhaps the first time in the entirety of my existence, I have questioned whether choosing to opt for the person I am and the life I have is a bad deal or if it is really fine and I am just nervous about not being able to find people on my level. 

I don't expect anyone to empathize with my life or the problems that surround it, "I ordered too many fries and I didn't know what to do with them." I was told it's a nice problem to have, and it truly is, no two ways about it. 

This is where things get real- when you talk to your friends and they no longer care to want to get shit faced with fancy domestic gin or do whiskey shots to celebrate your biggest win or want to hang out for a meal. They want to build their life, with their partner, build a house, grow their career, look after the baby they've had after many problems with conceptions. Their life and your life no longer align and you find yourself bang in the middle of the words, "People will get married and move on and you'll be where you are."

Moving on, dear readers, is very fucking real and very fucking traumatizing. 

I think we can safely celebrate and specially mention two other kinds of moving on— where once a man who threw himself at me, and continued with that for months, is back with his ex-wife (or did he ever leave?) and another who told me things are not working out in his life with his wife and their relationship and sought me as a crutch to move on has a 4-year-old baby who started school this year. Life's really funny, people move on without you and you're reminded of the hike from a school trip years ago, where you and three other losers chose to get sick and stayed back at the hotel, empty stomach while the rest of the clowns went hiking, get this, in a car. 

Somehow, I found worth in getting sick and choosing to opt-out there, even after all these years. It's not something that I had to do but I did. Maybe, I will find peace in my choices of being stationary and letting the world move around and move on. 

Maybe, the 30s are all about uniting with others like you and starting afresh with a different road where you're no longer the central character in a sequin dress at a pub, on a date with the hottest guy in town, but instead, cosying up to other freaks like you halfway across the world cause they see you for who you are. Until then, we can hope they don't celebrate their wedding anniversary anytime soon. 

 Earlier this week, I went shopping. 

Truth be told, nothing about the old life or the memories hold value cause all of that is in the past. A past that was snatched a little too soon without any intimation. I digress but the market was a ride of emotions. 

I had not accounted for how bad the grief of losing my grandfather is going to be until I set foot there and every little thing reminded me of the times I'd visit alone (infrequently with friends even). Armed with petty cash, I'd shop some bargain hunts, find a thing or two for my grandfather, and end up paying for a few pairs of shoes that my grandfather would encourage despite no storage space at mine. It's really something that he did. Perhaps, to see the misplaced youth where he couldn't afford the same luxury. 

Anyway, the market, the grandfather, and all the rest are pretty much gone. I tugged those memories and got to business— some cycling shorts, t-shirts I don't need but then again I do, and some dresses. It was all like a carnival with no participants. As a friend pointed out today (upon his visit), one could see the floor of the market, which is usually covered with trash unattended.

In all of this, I've come to miss the boy from Melbourne who took me around my city, that he knew better than me. I hope he's doing well. 

 I am alive!

I don't want to go all, "Look at me I fought COVID" cause let's be real, it was a bad, bad battle and my doc felt more out of control and when the car driver is outta control you know it's the end. 

To be fair, I was content if it had been the end. I don't think I cared enough or at all for the material belongings. I had abandoned my phone on Day 3 and was in fact losing it when people were reaching out to check on me. This will probably be the only time I'll confess but besides my family, I didn't want to hear from anyone, including the people I said I love you to (a fair few) and then there were some I was thinking of, hard, for some reason, when I was choking and out of breath. I am yet to open that pandora's box because I never reached out to any of those despite thinking of them when I thought it was it. Pleasantly surprised with my behaviour in the last month.

There was also a lot of crying. A lot means a lot, like thrice a day daily from Day 3 onwards. I don't understand how the Oximeter kept showing a level upward of 90 when I found it hard to breathe from Day 3 and even at the hospital, things kept getting delayed (treatment, medicines) cause the indicative levels were decent, until one day when things just came down crashing. 

Things felt more helpless a fortnight later (which is when you're officially considered non-infectious whether or not you get a test) and I was still there. The medicines were not working (or well, working as much as I expected them to). I was constantly on injections, steroids, anti-biotics, anti-coagulation shots, oral medicines— despite there being no sense of taste, my mouth was constantly dry and bitter and I was emotionally a mess. I found myself to be helpless, useless and a general waste of space where my parents were trying hard to save me, the team of doctors and nurses were working their best to rescue me, but my body was like, "Nope, nothing doing. We off, fam!" I've never felt more betrayed. What's the point of not drinking alcohol, not eating processed carbs and fasting 18 hours a day while not smoking if this is how hard everyone had to fight to keep me alive and pump medicines like petrol in a car? 

To be fair, things were also extremely grim cause everyone I gave any fucks about here was sick out of their minds and people were losing other people. Some of the coldest people I know reached out to me with their "I love you don't die" texts and it freaked me out a little. Like dude, come on, you think I was trying to harm myself? I actively didn't want to die and my body wasn't cooperating.

At this point, it's a bit of a joke, all of my trauma but given how real it all is and how slowly my body is recovering, I'll probably make fewer jokes when I write about this again. It just seems hard to process everything— of not knowing whether I'll have oxygen, of not having parental support and just crying my eyes to send me home or give me a toilet that I could access. I could write a whole essay on my trauma of using shared washrooms over the years across institutions but I'll spare everyone the horror, and myself too. 

This is actually the first piece of writing I've attempted and along with the sense of taste and smell, covid has snatched my writing, editing and punctuation skills. I also don't seem to care about it mostly because the sense of entitlement of kicking covid after three long weeks is so real and heavy that I don't know if I'll ever want to take myself seriously again.

Until then, handy advice. If you're down with covid and want a burger from McDonald's, only eat McVeggie cause that's the only one which will taste of something.

Also, is there a covid/institutional version of Stockholm Syndrome? I miss the hospital bed now, the food that I threw 7/13 days and my space there. It seemed like it belonged to me on my last day there and now it feels like it's gone and that if anything were to ever happen to me, I just want to be there and die in Room 300, bed 08, right in front of the window where a lizard would rest. 

Unacceptable COVID banter/small talk/post result chat (unsolicited):

How did you get it? 

I don't think you noticed but that's an ongoing global pandemic. I didn't exactly push myself to walk into a COVID ward at a hospital to "get it". Kinda like saying, a rape victim was "asking for it". 

What are you doing for food?

Reframe that question to, "What can I send you to make you feel better?"

I don't think my parents/boyfriend/employer/street dog is gonna let me meet you now, even when you recover. 

Okay, thanks. Not that I was keen on socializing but good to know I have illiterates masquerading as literates among my circle. 

Why don't you eat healthy food instead?

Go sit in the Sun. I read in this research. 

No, I'm burning with fever. I'm not sitting in the fucking Sun.

Get off your phone and rest. 

Buddy, I'm cooped up in a room. WITH NOTHING TO DO AND NO ENERGY TO DO ANYTHING. If being able to hold my phone and shitpost and distract me and not want to kill me is my jam, let me be. 

Gargle with Betadine. 

No. 

Things I'm absolutely sick of hearing (July 2020)

I had a normal day today. 

Speculation on why we got fucked by Covid:

We have a five year age gap, my sister and I. We’re at two ends of a spectrum, that’s how different we are. If you were to meet us, you’d never know we’re cut from the same cloth.

Covid may have started the discourse around the new world, but it hasn't quite rescued us from our traumas. Our traumas, the kind that we carry with us at all times. The ones that don't quite show outwards until a trigger or many. These are just as real as it was in our pre-Covid life. 

Nothing noteworthy happened today. Besides, 

(Title track; reference of the day)

How do you get to know someone? Do you ever get to know someone? 

Please raise your hand if you've been personally victimized by CBSE on your English score. 

I've never come close to dating a man who loves to cook. Which means, I've never earmarked cooking as a hobby designated to go in the backburner after the thing with the said gentleman ceases to work. It's true though, this ilk. I've seen it with so many things I love and distanced from and I feel I can no longer make sacrifices on the hobby end of things.