Skins

I do not like the smell of covid. Usually, you can tell when you’re at the tail end of a sickness because it’s right when you realize you can breathe easier. And the hours and days before then, when you forgot when it felt like, when you thought you’d never get to remember what it felt like, suddenly begin to fade. That fade always has a smell. Colds smell like Spring. Not what Spring actually smells like, but what you smell when you think of the grass and and the dew and the flowers. Sinus infections smell like the richness of chocolate with the sharpness of mint. The flu smells like if you stomped on a blueberry and it crackled like a dry leaf. Yes, I am aware that that is not a smell. But it is. They’re not exactly pleasant smells, not anything you’d try to make a candle out of, but they’re not at all bad. Maybe it’s like the opposite of medicine that everyone hates because it’s so strongly associated with feeling like shit, since this I associate with the recovery. But I also think most medicines taste like shit regardless, and I also know that a lot of the time that’s on purpose to prevent abuse. I’m always a little sad when I can’t smell the illness anymore. I won’t be sad this time.

The smell of covid is rancid. It’s like if you let only a few tendons in an artificial steak sit on the counter for a night during the summer and snuck it back in to the meat. And in tasting the sour, you tried to add some salt to cover the taste and accidentally poured the whole shaker on it. And then continued to eat. I know I’m lucky I didn’t entirely lose my sense of taste and smell, but this is also rather awful. I haven’t eaten properly in days. And as I force food down my throat, I can only think of how a week ago, I hated the fact that I loved to eat. I suppose I should be glad I’ll end up having lost weight.

Two nights ago it snowed. And city snow looks beautiful until you get to the road. And of course anytime it snows, I have to text Puma and tell her it did because how can it snow without me thinking about the time I looked her in the eye and told her it snew in our first year of college and she began to cry at the absurdity that a girl who wanted to get an English major thought the past tense of snow was snew. I wish I still had that video.

Not much else has happened in the meantime. I find out about the test on Tuesday. My skin is in shambles and I can’t figure out why. This has never happened before, it’s like I’m going through a second puberty, but only the bad things. It’s occurred to me that so much of my life consists of… just waiting. In fact that’s all I really do for anything. I wait for my skin to get back to normal. I lie in bed and wait for the motivation to do work come crashing over me minutes before deadlines. I wait for people to text back. I wait for the depression to pass. I wait for the scores. I wait for when I’m tired enough to sleep again even though I haven’t done anything. I wait for inspiration stand in front of me and slap in the face because I wouldn’t recognize it otherwise. I keep waiting to reach my final form, and then I tell my self and then, I can start really living.

But that’s not how it works at all, is it? I don’t seem to do much for myself. I suppose there’s the drugs. Sometimes there’s the foods. The looking outside the window. The music. But every time I try, and I do try, I find myself asking, is this it? I’ll try to go on a walk because I know it’s just a thing people do. I’ll make a night time routine, light a candle, because that’s what people do. I walk to Starbucks in the mornings and get a drink because for a moment I feel like I am doing what I should be doing. I go to work. I do the work. I go on dates. And I wonder if there’s something wrong with me, because maybe I do things differently. I hope to all the gods that it’s because I’m doing it all wrong because the alternative is that it’s not enough. Nothing will ever be enough. I practice violin, I set a goal of joining an orchestra, but does it really actually truly bring me joy? It’s just something else to take up time. It’s nothing I can do more with. At least I don’t know how. Life cannot simply be this never-ending cascade of things I need to deal with, where 90% is maintenance and planning.

I think I wasn’t built for this. When I cannot sleep and I grow tired of dissecting myself, I think about how I was as a child. I wonder about if I’ve changed, and though I wish I had, I think I’ve always been like this. A little strange. A little off. I know that I am off. I can tell when other people are off. Something about the way they talk or move, I see it all the time, some people just “are” and others are missing something. I know I’m missing something too. I wonder if anyone else can tell. They can’t seem to tell with the ones I point out. My mom likes to joke that the dog is autistic because he refuses to look people in the eyes. And then she’ll say he really is your dog because she had to force me to look people in the eyes as a kid. I’m still not good at that. Do you look in the right eye or left eye or in between and look at neither eye. I used to have to count in my head while talking to someone, ten seconds left eye look away ten seconds right eye nod. And then she’ll go into all of the things she had to fix, like how I either wouldn’t talk at all or I would yell so emphatically and quickly and over the top. I’d have temper tantrums and destroy things all the time if anything at all went wrong. And especially when she tried to make me wear socks and certain pants. Oh god how I hated socks. I suppose I still do. I didn’t know how to smile, which makes for awkward family photos. And I didn’t really make friends either for a long time. But I think I was just a shy, awkward, quirky kid. Just like anyone else. She just has too high a bar for counts for normal. Mostly I think she’s proud of all of the things she’s managed to change about me.

I used to say that I was missing a soul. But I don’t think that’s true either. I’ve come around to thinking that I do have one, she’s just flaky as fuck. And in the hours that I feel alive, it means I’ve caught her. I imagine this glowing blue light drifting around the city, a little lost, a little free. And when I am upright, dancing to music, doing my work, talking to friends, she has drifted into the cage of my ribs and for moments at a time I get to be whole. I know when it is that I have her because I never ask, is this it? I see things for how they are and they are enough. They are more than enough. But for right now, for this day, I do not understand life. I think I understood it a lot more when I was sick and in pain. I think I get sad about dating because I assume that others have it all figured out, and that they can see I do not. And so I tell myself over and over until I start to believe it, they don’t have the answers either.

The not eating on account of covid has been lovely. I hate to say it because I’m not seeking an eating disorder but the not wanting to eat makes me feel good. When I think about how I haven’t eaten anything for the day, I feel a little proud. I feel very proud, even though I know I shouldn’t. And so I’ll shovel a little bit of food into my body and get to feel doubly proud. I know my weight is a non issue. Logically, I know there is nothing wrong with the way I look. Overall, pretty good in fact. But getting to pretend that I’m single because I’m not skinny enough means I get to focus on something tangible, something fixable. Instead of the alternative, which is that I’m a little off and a little weird and don’t have much of a life yet, which is a far harder thing to pinpoint and change. I wonder how long I need to keep doing this until I get to see my ribs. Yes I am well aware that the way I’m writing really does make it seem like I want an eating disorder, or that I probably already do have one. But it’s not like I’m thinking about it all the time, and I’m not tortured by it. I used to be skinnier, you know? Is it so bad that I want to be like her again?

It’s my mom’s birthday tomorrow. I had originally planned a surprise dinner with a surprise visit from me. Since the illness took away from that, I’ve decided that I should paint her something. But I don’t know what to paint. And I don’t know how to start if I don’t know how to end, and so I haven’t yet. I’m sorry that this post is not as masterful as some of my other ones. My sleep schedule is a mess and so am I. And though I am sad, I guess I’m not sad enough to write anything notable.