Do you?

Can't stop thinking of the last time we were together.

You told me you didn't want me to take it the wrong way, but you wanted me to be happy. To find someone. A part of me feels the same way about you, the non selfish part, the part they say loves the most, because apparently letting someone go is the highest form of love.

In a small way, I guess I could come to reasoning with the fact that you seemed to be asking me to let you go. Maybe, as you said, you didn't want me to take it the wrong way, but what other way am I supposed to take it? We can both say we want each other to find someone else that makes us happy, but when it really happens, I think both of us are going to be secretly shocked at the fact that we could. I know it's beyond either of our control-we stumbled into each other's lives because of a myspace message between two lesbians. But that was twelve years ago. Things are much different now. We still both have hangups. I have zero interest in finding someone else. I hate God, for crying out loud. I hate him and maybe that's a pretty dumb thing to say while the world is dissolving, but I can't help it. I have oodles and oodles of issues before I think about someone else. And you know what I think when it comes to yours.

I'm scared of being left behind in this whole process. I know it's stupid and I know it's leftover shit from high school, but the idea of being the last man standing while someone else is further along on their path to Moving On than I am, well, I can't bear it. If that #%(#%*#*@ up there had any compassion for us at all, he'd have built us with an internal switch that we can flip when two people part ways, and leave only good-will and distance. But he doesn't give a shit. In my head, the G word looked down at all of us some time ago, sneered, and gave up the whole lot, threw in the towel, quit out of sheer boredom and indifference. A month or two ago I used to rail at the sky but now I don't even look up there anymore. I ignore that whole thing. It brings to mind a line from Conan the Barbarian, which goes like this:

The Wizard : The dead... the gods are pleased with you, they will watch the battle.

Conan : Are they going to help?

The Wizard : No.

Conan : Well, then tell them to stay out of the way.

Maybe I'm just asking for shit to happen to me with the way I feel about him, but I don't give a flying fuck right now. Maybe I will, and maybe he doesn't really care (pretty sure he doesn't) but being angry keeps me from being sad. Maybe you have differing thoughts, but I always thought that you and I, despite our differences, worked very well together, and I'm still so confused as to WHY this had to happen. Sometimes it feels as if I am the only one who asks that question, but you were always much better at letting the universe flow through you. Me, I gotta fight it. I'm sure that as soon as I just 'accept it' I will feel much better, but I'm not good at accepting things. Especially things that have no basis in reason, and this has no basis in reason.

In other news, work is still open. They've put tape on the floors demonstrating six feet of distance, and now we have the super strong wipes that we have to wear gloves to use. Wearing a mask is driving me nuts, but it beats hacking my lungs out in ICU. I've been going through at least 3-4 books every two days. Right now I'm reading The Splendid & The Vile, about WWII and Winston Churchill. There was an organization in Britain in those days called Mass Observation, where people were required to keep diaries as a record of life in England during those times. They had to document everything-smells, the time, their surroundings, to the very minute. Funny to think that we have our own Mass Observation, through FB and Insta and Twitter, and these people were tough. They were writing about bombs while bombs were literally dropping on their street. Meanwhile, we have motherfuckers downtown who organize second lines and get all pissy when we arrest them. SOCIAL DISTANCING, YOU ASSHOLES. I DON'T WANT TO BE SITTING IN MY APARTMENT COME JUNE, BABBLING IN SWAHILI TO MY KITCHEN FAUCET.

Most of the time, I try to keep my head up through all this, because I have no choice. Unless I want to give up. And I don't, even though sometimes I feel like I might. Gotta go to work, because rent is due. Gotta go to the store, even though it's dangerous. Gotta somehow sit in my apartment and occupy my mind enough to where I don't go over the past five or six years with a fine tooth comb and wonder if there was something that could have been done to prevent all of this. I know I'm supposed to be social distancing, but if the weather's decent on Saturday, I have to get out, even if it's just to go to the cemetery, which is a place that's pretty fucking socially distant. I kind of want to ride through the Quarter, but I know better. I don't want to go anywhere that close to the city right now.

Maybe it's just this whole pandemic thing getting to me, but I can't stop worrying-

I don't want to be the one left behind, still wondering.

-Rae