I am terrible with updates. Not that I have all this amazing shit going on. That’s a lot of it. I tell my birth father I try not to bug him so much with shit news because who wants to hear it. It’s as fun as having no news, so I am less revealing in this place than I would normally want to be. But there isn’t a hell of a lot to reveal. We’re in a pandemic, after all.

I did hear back about my echo. Somehow the test was better than the last one I had in May. I am not shocked, not really. I have this pretty sweet ability to use this mind of mine to make shit happen. Not anything super amazing, mind you, but survival. Survival I do like nobody else. It’s a magic I have been able to employ since my strokes haven’t taken away my ability to imagine a better life or outcome for myself.

One thing I have learned in this life of mine. I hate that “everything happens for a reason” saying. I really do. Things happen because something is happening all of the time. Especially in my life–I have always been great at ensuring that. I have no idea how I’ve managed, since it does seem that sometimes I am sitting in a hole of despair, not waiting for shit to happen, but wishing it so. Wishing for something different, picturing a different life at points, wishing for better shit. The past few years the person making shit happen in my life is Don. For a while it was all me, but I got to let go of that for a bit. He did remind me the other day he would get a job where he did a year ago. And he did. He told me he would get us away from here to Europe for his next wish. It’s something I am trying to hang on to something I am trying to force my body to adhere to, because it’s the one thing I feel we both deserve. A break away from whatever this is here. It’s not the thing I imagined for myself when I was a kid. The American dream I’ve gotten to know is sickness and loss. There’s very little room for hope in place which absolutely detests its sickest and takes everything from them.

I am still very lucky. I know this. I am still allowed to live. I am not sick. I know it’s not accidental. I did this. Don did this. We got out of a state full of selfish and infected people. We got away from the sunshine. We are now in a jungle full of selfish people, though slightly less infected. He got confirmation Monday that another few people he was working with were sick. Because of me he isn’t working in the same rooms as them most of the time. And I am crazy, of course, I force him to re-evaluate what he touches, who he interacts with, where he holds his breath. I told him people are liars, and that someone was bound to get sick because people are selfish. Thanksgiving made people stupid. People don’t understand, or maybe they don’t care. People maybe are just all used to getting what they want because they want it. But me. No. I am used to this world of pain, sickness and loss of normalcy. It is all I have known.

I drop him off and pick him up every day. My grocery store runs, after all. It is all the normalcy I get, crazy faced with a mask and goggles. I see nobody else dressed like that. I don’t really mind. To me they all have a death wish. To me they aren’t paying attention. I have become so accustomed to surviving this life I am able to do it, but maybe I don’t deserve it.

WordPress is a bitch. I got some Christmas money to help with some of my sites, but I am feeling I should send it to a woman I see crying out for help dozens of times a day on Twitter. She has daughters and no heat or electricity. And for once, for once in MY life, or for once in OUR lives, we are fine while everyone else is appearing to drown around us. For all the years we drowned invisibly and had little help but for when I became desperate and begged my two sources for an out, this upside-down world we live in has left us okay. With an income, a home. Sure, I have no money and will likely have to file for bankruptcy for less than $8k of debt. But it’s not on him and we don’t have $8k for that. Half of what he makes goes to our rent, a third to insurance so I don’t have to die and drag him down with me. The other we eat. I AM trying. But even though my tests were better than May 2020, I am still tired. I still have chest pain. I don’t have what I need to do all I want to do, energy-wise, that is. Maybe I need more bio-feedback to turn the tide. But some things require more than a wish and a prayer, and maybe this May will be when I get my new valve and final lease. Maybe I won’t survive. Mostly I feel I will. I hope. I am tired. I hurt. I want to get out of this country. It’s the best wish I have I can muster. It’s the only wish worth wishing on. Maybe then I can start to live without this burden of a shit country hooded over my head.

For now, for now I am doing what I can to ensure things aren’t going to be the same in a year as they are for us now. It requires way more than wishing, of course. It requires action. And certainly I am not leaving it all on him. But he will likely be the one making the bigger changes for us. His birthday was yesterday and somehow…somehow the man is peaking in his 50’s. I told him that today and he said, I was always a little later than most.

Me, too, Don. Me, too.