(no subject)

[brin_bellway]

[cw: illness, venting, (arguably) scrupulosity]


Myriad members of society:

'haha we're all "homestuck" this year, get it? because we're all stuck? at home?'

"Yesterday I cried about a donut, because it had coconut on it and I don’t like coconut. And it’s been four months since I had the chance to give coconut-flavored donuts to a person that likes them instead of eating alone by myself."

'god, I can't remember the last time I was in the same room as a stranger, fucking 2020 mood am I right'

"I’m basically staying in a pretty tight lockdown, which is doable, but is giving up on a lot of opportunities for enjoyment"

'so I went to the nail salon today and they made me wear a mask and sit behind this little plexiglass thing with a hole to put my hand through, but hey, at least it was open'

"wondering how long it will take before dramatic depictions become completely divorced from reality in their attempt to turn boredom and loneliness into terror that can be communicated in 90 minutes"


Me, an essential worker, lunging for their throats: "I STAY HERE FOR YOU!! YOU STAY HOME FOR ME!!!"

Comments

[brin_bellway]

Every week, I come in to work and find that the distancing barriers have been arranged to leave large gaps that customers can--and often do--shove themselves through. Every week, I rearrange them to leave smaller gaps in the areas where customers will be most tempted to shove themselves in, in exchange for larger gaps in non-tempting areas. Sometimes they still shove themselves through the small gaps. We don't have enough barriers to leave no gaps at all.

'Well,' I think bitterly, 'it makes sense. After all, they were told to stay six feet away from *people*. Nobody told them anything about staying six feet away from *servants*.'

[brin_bellway]

I could've been one of them. Maybe that's the most painful thing, is knowing by how small a margin I fell short of their charmed lives. If I'd been a little faster, a little richer, a little more focused on a goal that felt like it would never arrive.

I hate knowing they were right. Everyone who told me that school was the most important thing, that I should pour my heart and soul into it, sacrifice everything if it meant getting a certificate in a single year, or an associate's in two, or a bachelor's in four.

Okay, they weren't *actually* thinking about the risk of being left behind when quarantines inevitably hit, but they *could* have. *We* could have. I amped up my standard anti-disease procedures when I started working here, ran faster and *still* couldn't stay in one place: I went from a cold every year or two to a cold every few months. There was nothing to *stop* me from following that train of thought a little further, connecting the dots, thinking about that one friend of a friend with what I suppose we would now term Long H1N1 (so much suffering, months of being unable to function, a probable lifetime of frailness).

Maybe it still wouldn't have been enough. The paycheque isn't what's holding me to this job *now*, but it was very much important when I started. All those hours I couldn't spend on school because I needed to go and earn money instead, all that disruption to clockwork study schedules. Hell, for a while there I was working menial-Internet-labour 3 - 4 hours a day on *top* of waged work.

(What *is* holding me to this job, you ask? Primarily, the ability to *say* that I did: to put "July 2017 - Present" on my resume, to not have government or potential employers or anyone else look at me and say "that essential worker abandoned her post in time of need" and decide to treat me accordingly. God knows I'd have been fucked over so hard if I'd quit in March like I was tempted to: the government absolutely *did* later punish people who did that, left them to starve while those who continued were given bountiful aid.

Nobody's promised anything last I checked, but the government's considering the possibility of maybe, just maybe, making me third in line for the vaccine after healthcare workers and nursing-home people. They *specifically* framed it as a reward for staying the course and feeding my safety into the coal-fires of society. (well, okay, those weren't their *exact* words, but it was very much framed *as a reward* for having performed these services and *not* as "since you get exposed to so many people, you actually *are* one of the highest-risk groups and *should* get high triage priority"))

[contrarianarchon]

:(

Do you want a hygienic internet-hug? If so, you can have one.