sometimes i think gravity is a pity

I'm standing at a very strange intersection of emotions right now. Today is the first anniversary of my "indefinite furlough," which means it has been one full year since I was suspended from my job as an environmental educator. It's a cold sort of feeling to wake up to. I cried for an hour after a job interview on Friday for no specific reason, but today, when there is a very real event upon which to hang my hopelessness, I feel flat, dull, numb.

At the exact same time, today is the day I get my second Covid vaccine, and with it, there is a tiny sense that maybe--maybe!!--this could be something to propel me back into the world, that maybe I can start collecting goodness again. I miss art. I miss music. I miss walking in unfamiliar, far away woods and eavesdropping on strangers in coffee shops. I've always been alone, but being alone has never felt so deeply lonely in the way it does now. I have shrunk so much during the past year. I'm yearning to grow again.

So, today I'm experiencing a very painful pandemic milestone, and I'm also actively taking a step towards future joy. That these two events randomly coincided has got to be significant. Something has got to come of this.

I've hit a wall with so many things: journaling, viola, exercise, getting outside, applying for jobs, reading, my CQL rewatch... I want to be able to write again, but I'm also trying to be gentle with myself, because I know that loss/fragmentation of language is part of what happens when I'm in the pits. I still have this little fic I was working on for a MDZS Rarepairs prompt, and I did manage to finish it on a good day. I'm grateful that there's still a little bit of time to edit. Right now, I'm too embarrassed to even look at it. It's pretty terrible! And I don't know if I can make it better! But as much as I want to treat myself gingerly, I know that finishing something will be a good little triumph, so I'm hoping I can push through and make it to the end.

I did manage to do a few things over the past week, which I hope will help keep me moving. I finished Return of the Thief by Megan Whalen Turner. I had a lot of guilty feelings about not really liking it, because it's a series that has been incredibly important to me for 20 years (one whole third of my life!!), and I know what an authorial effort it was to have completed the work finally! I may write more about it later, but I'm still thinking through all the reasons it didn't hit me in the same way as the other books, so that's TBD.

I also finished Ace by Angela Chen, which, for different reasons is taking a long time to process. I came out as asexual super casually at 16, and the reaction of my family and (most of) my peers was so skeptical, I went right back to pretending. I came out again about a year ago, again super casually, at a DEI workshop with a bunch of strangers (because it wasn't like I was ever going to see them again). Since then, it's just been one thing after another as I've been trying to reframe how I think about my sexuality. This book was such a balm. I literally can't stop crying over it.

And I started journaling again after about a two week hiatus. A friend in Scotland sent me a new deck of tarot cards with an artsy botanical theme, so I've been using them as prompts, which has been great motivation. They're beautiful and shiny and clever, and I love them. I know three days in a row is far from becoming a good habit, but three days in a row is a big deal for me, so I'm going to celebrate it!