The world as I knew it quickly dissipated before my eyes and I didn't even see it coming. It started crumbling as I was on my way back to Florida after a trip to New Orleans with my best friend from college and her best friend from high school. We sat in the airport, still oblivious to what was really going on. I dusted powdered sugar--the messy remnants from my airport beignet--from my hands. I was feeling relieved. At the beginning of the trip, I lost my ID in the streets of New Orleans but somehow, I was able to seamlessly get through airport security without it. Losing my ID seemed to be the result of the perfect combination of wrong decisions. On the day of the tragedy, we decided to take a 20-minute walk to a popular New Orleans restaurant for brunch. I decided to wear my new pair of American Eagle jeans with a hole in the left pocket, unbeknownst to me. And I decided to keep my ID and credit card in that same left pocket.
We got to the restaurant, The Ruby Slipper Cafe, and added our names to a list. Since it was pretty poppin', we walked around the neighborhood to wait our turn to get seated. Maybe during that rendezvous is when my ID fell. I'm not entirely sure. But I bought a mimosa at the cafe, we ate and paid for our brunch, and had walked about 10 minutes away from the restaurant to go to the Louis Armstrong Park for a jazz festival before I realized I didn't have my ID with me anymore. I only decided to check for it after finding out from a website that we could buy drinks there. I reached into my left pocket and pulled out my credit card but there was no ID. That's when I also realized I had an "aesthetic" hole in my pocket. The cards wouldn't normally fall out if it was placed in the pocket normally. But I somehow placed it in just the right position for it to slip. Thankfully, the girls came with me to retrace my steps, staring at the ground to see where it could've possibly fallen.
I think we were so tired that we probably didn't look everywhere we possibly could've. But we trudged home and took naps as soon as we got back. I called the police station too, in case anyone had found it and left my ID there. But that proved to be useless. I was convinced it had been picked up and kept by some teenager to finesse alcohol, probably. When inconvenient things happen, my mom has always told me that these things happen for a reason. I kept telling myself that to keep me from feeling too bad. But it was still annoying to have no ID in New Orleans -- the city of Bourbon Street, jazz clubs, and open container drinking. It worked out that we were all so tired from our regular jobs that all we really wanted to do was chill, eat, and wander.
We ate so much in New Orleans. We ate out for every meal of the day and then ate more meals. I just couldn't stop eating. I don't know how much weight I gained after that excursion. But when I got back from New Orleans, I didn't even have the time to recoup and get back into the gym because as soon as I stepped back in Florida, the country began to shutdown. The coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, was spreading like wildfire in the United States. I had my "friend" Jeremy staying at my place temporarily before he left for Colorado and when I stepped into the apartment, he had the news on. The NBA was canceled for the season. It was crazy to hear. But even then, I still didn't quite understand the gravity of this disease. I didn't realize that it attacked your organs, particularly your lungs, and made it hard to breathe. People were suffocating to death and they couldn't even be with their families to say their last goodbyes because it's so contagious. I didn't know any of that at all yet.
So that following weekend, I went to a St. Patrick's Day party. The hosts were considering canceling it but they didn't and we all went anyway. We didn't stay at the house party for long actually. It was sort of lame, to be frank. We left to hang out at a lesbian couple's place before going downtown to hit the bars. Somehow, I didn't catch the coronavirus then. Or at least, I didn't experience any symptoms. But my best friend was already beginning her self-quarantine up in Pennsylvania and a lot of other people around the country were too. Then, I went to work for the following days after that weekend. I remember my building seemed eerily quieter or calmer. I'm pretty sure people began self-quarantining that week and a few people on my team did as well. I was concerned the entire time but for some reason, I was too afraid to look paranoid.
I eventually began to stay home and work remotely, either at the end of that week or the beginning of next week. But not long after, my company mandated that we work from home if we possibly could. That was all back in the middle of March. Now it's June, almost three months since. I've gone through many bouts of paranoia, anxiety, and worry. I don't leave my house for much. I hardly move. I get up from bed, go to my dining table for work, and sit all day. I'm too scared to even take a walk in my neighborhood for fear of inhaling the coronavirus from a passerby. I don't like going outside much at all, even to my car, for fear of bringing back even a little speck of the virus into my apartment. I get most of my groceries from Instacart, every Thursday, and I wipe everything down in a bleach solution. Soaking each product in bleach and letting it sit for 10 minutes before putting it away. I barely buy meals on UberEats or anything like that. Who knows if the chef coughed on my food or if the UberEats driver sneezed on the bag they handed to me?
A few weeks into the quarantine, I mistook bad asthma symptoms for coronavirus symptoms. My throat was dry and scratchy and one of the symptoms of coronavirus was a sore throat. I checked my temperature incessantly. It was always normal but I couldn't calm myself down. I called my health insurance right before bedtime to talk to a nurse. She told me to just quarantine myself for 14 days and scheduled for me to talk to a doctor the next day. That only scared me further. I couldn't wait.
In the morning, I called the local health department and they scheduled for me to take a test only a few hours later. In hindsight, the only real symptom I had was paranoia. Perhaps, the health professionals on the phone knew this. Maybe not. We were all going crazy from the mysteriousness of this disease after all. But because of my asthma, they let me go ahead and take it. I kept it relatively together until I called my parents to tell them I was going to take the test. That's when I started sobbing. They reassured me that I was fine but I still had to know.
I got to the testing site and I had a long swab put down my left nostril. It was sooo uncomfortable. The left side of the back of my head hurt for almost an hour. It was so bad, I couldn't drive. I pulled into a nearby neighborhood to gather myself. I didn't think it would be that bad because I had just taken the flu test right after I came back from New Orleans. I actually went to the doctor because I had the weirdest headache when I was on the plane. It felt like electricity underneath my skin. Especially in the way that it spread from my right brow to my eye. I could feel the pain in the back of my head too. It hurt more when I touched it but not always. I had never experienced a face/headache like that in my life and I was thousands of feet in the air, and people were freaking out over a killer virus. I thought I was dying.
The pain didn't stop for a few days actually. According to the doctor, it was sinusitis from allergies. It really kills me that my allergies have been so bad lately that I'm experiencing the weirdest symptoms. I had to go on antibiotics and everything. I didn't even get the sniffles first. Just a damn headache. Can you imagine?
But I digress.
After taking the coronavirus test, I was told to quarantine. If I tested positive, I would hear back from them. Otherwise, I won't. They said it would take 7 days. I waited at my phone for longer and heard nothing. And I didn't get extremely sick so I have to believe I didn't have it then.
For a long time, I was contemplating death very deeply. Especially when I had that bout of paranoia. I wasn't even just scared for myself. I was scared for my family. I can't really go back to those thoughts right now. It was almost three months ago and so I've forgotten the depths of it all. Later, I started having trouble sleeping. I couldn't even take naps without being scared of not waking up. I hated that blackness of unconsciousness. That dark place of no control. When you sleep and you don't dream, you only remember going to bed and waking up. What happens when you don't wake up. What do you feel in that prolonged, empty space? It frightened me.
In the past weeks, I've gotten over that. I don't like naps very much but I take them, and take a lot of them. I'm always tired, but that's not really new with me. Naps don't feel as sweet as they used to though because they never feel deserved. There's nothing to take a nap from. I don't do anything. I don't go anywhere.
I have made peace with losing about a year of my youth. I simply want to survive and make sure everyone I love survives too. As everyone does, I miss outside. I miss going out. I miss drinking. I miss dancing. I miss socializing. I miss going to cafes on the weekend and sitting by myself among the locals. I miss traveling. I miss making plans. I miss the possibilities.
A month into the shutdown, I started thinking about guys again. Right before the shutdown, I was in the depths of a huge crush. I initially nicknamed this crush Teddy but I'm going to call him Smokey now, short for Smokey the Bear. That's because I found out he's a smoker. With a bad habit too. I last saw him at a happy hour (which I believe was my last happy hour too) and he decided, for once, to stay out longer with the rest of our group. Every 30 minutes or so, he would just disappear. At some point, I realized that he would reappear smelling like smoke. That's when I put two-and-two together. It made me question things a little bit but also that night, he was engaging in conversation a little too much with my friend and I was getting jealous. I was feeling miserable even though everything else that night was great. That same night, a guy friend (a co-worker who I had been close with) talked about another guy being into me right in front of Smokey, and Taylor told me he looked uncomfortable when he started talking about it. And then later on in the night, we had a "dance moment", which I refrain to talk more about because it's too cheesy for me. But we vibed to the same song together and it was cute.
At the end of the night, you could see hearts in my eyes. When he left, I felt a pang in my heart. I knew I couldn't let things just keep happening like this. Where we only talked every other week, only at happy hours. I was going crazy, feeling like I never saw him enough. So when he left, I asked him out through text. My mistake.
Before that night, it would have been pretty clear to him that I liked him. He is a 30-year-old man, after all (which I always have to remind myself of). At that age, he should be very perceptive, and I believe he was. I think he liked feeling wanted. He had just gotten out of a long 3-year relationship, and it makes sense that he would want to feel desirable again. I get it but I hate that it was me that fell into that trap. It seems no one else did.
But in the time leading up to the big "ask out", I asked him if he would be at a few happy hours and invited him to a few other social events. I tried to play it cool. I would test him, wait for him to text me when the next happy hour came up. And he would. In person, we would be at each other's hips, only talking to each other. He seemed interested in me and he was tall, charming, and had dimples. OF COURSE, I became infatuated with him. I mean, anyone else would. But I'm mad because there were so many other signs that he wasn't interested and I didn't take heed. I know guys very well.
Guys wear their hearts on their sleeves. When they like you, they initiate. They REALLY initiate. They would never have you prying for more. They would never have you waiting. Smokey always made me feel like I wasn't doing enough.
In the back of my mind, I think I knew he didn't like me like that. I remember thinking that no matter what the outcome was, I needed Smokey to know that I liked him or I would explode. So after he left that night, I texted him to ask if he'd want to go out to lunch sometime. And he messaged me back saying something like, "Sure, but I'm still getting over my ex so it's still hard for me right now."
And I read that as "no". It was a "no". The answer had been "no" for a long time. As soon as I felt that I needed to ask him out, I had already lost. Guys who like you will never give you a chance to ask them out. In the past, guys who have expressed interest in me made plans to hang out the same day they met me or the second time. It's the same for other women. I don't believe in women pursuing because we've never had to. We don't have to pursue because the rules of the game are written in pen. This isn't anti-feminist. It's the law of things. Guys go for what they want. It's just how things work. And I disregarded all of it because I was desperate.
So then I was devastated. Not only was I feeling the pain of rejection but I also felt so foolish.
Why did I fall for him and why did I let him catch me slipping when I should have known he wasn't going to catch me?
I didn't sleep well that weekend. My brain kept racing, trying to put together where I went wrong. In everything. In my entire life. So I went to Walmart at around 4 or 5 in the morning and decided to buy a 1500-piece puzzle. I listened to Anita Baker as I put the edges together. I can't remember when I finally went to bed because I spent all of that day putting the puzzle together. I definitely fell asleep at some point in the daytime. And I guess after a few months, I can say I have healed from all of that. Please don't think that I'm an overreacting. I think I'm nuts too. But I'm just trying to be honest about how I felt and feel. I didn't stop thinking about Smokey for a very long time. To be honest, the only thing that really got my mind off him was the coronavirus panic. Can't really think about useless men when you're worried about you and your family dying from a horrific disease.
By the way, I finished the puzzle a month later, once we were all shut into our homes. I had nothing better to do.
I forgot to mention that in response to Smokey's message, I said something along the lines of, "there's no pressure, just let me know". He didn't respond to that. He didn't text me again until almost a month later actually. I was sitting in the airport, about to get on my plane to New Orleans and he texted, "Hey stranger". I can't even explain to you the way my emotions made all types of flips, and flops, and rolls. I was surprised, and then annoyed, and then flattered ... among a bunch of other emotions. Anything and everything that would make sense in such a situation. He wanted to go out downtown and was asking if I was dong anything. I waited a little bit to make him suffer as he made me suffer. I contemplated not responding back at all. But I'm a wuss. I texted him back probably 15 minutes later and told him I was on my way to NOLA. We talked back and forth. I tried to make plans to go out whenever I was back but he said he had to go to this grandfather's funeral in the first weekend I'd be back. I said we'll plan for later then.
We said good nights before my plane took off and that was the last time he messaged me. And stupid me. I thought he would have texted me by now. If that doesn't solidify it, I don't know what will. Sadly, now that my mind has begun to clear from the coronavirus panic, I'm thinking about him again. I guess I just miss him. And I also guess that I'm a little resentful, and a little hopeful. Sometimes I think where he is right now. Is he with his family? Did he get back together with his girlfriend? Does he ever think of me? There's just too much time to think so I keep replaying moments in my head that I'd like to forget. That's what sucks the most about quarantine. I can't make new memories. I can't forget.
I'm going to end this post here. There's a lot of shit happening in this world right now. Every state in the United States is rioting against police brutality and systematic racism against black people. The movement is so large that the public has forced every large company to address the issue for fear of losing their business. People are looting stores. People are peacefully protesting. The police are attacking, disfiguring, and killing people. People are running to social media with tears in their eyes. It's hard to tell who is real and who is just being performative--faking for fear of shame. The Reddit app icon is literally black right now, in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Before last week, it would have been taboo for a company or public figure to associate themselves with Black Lives Matter. And in a week, it's become the exact opposite. The solidarity--both real and fake--is just nothing I've ever seen before. I think it's beautiful and scary. It's beautiful to see how much power there is in the black folk. It's scary to think nothing is going to actually change. We're living in such a weird world right now.
I hope to expand on my feelings on this in another post. All of this deserves another post.
Good night!
We got to the restaurant, The Ruby Slipper Cafe, and added our names to a list. Since it was pretty poppin', we walked around the neighborhood to wait our turn to get seated. Maybe during that rendezvous is when my ID fell. I'm not entirely sure. But I bought a mimosa at the cafe, we ate and paid for our brunch, and had walked about 10 minutes away from the restaurant to go to the Louis Armstrong Park for a jazz festival before I realized I didn't have my ID with me anymore. I only decided to check for it after finding out from a website that we could buy drinks there. I reached into my left pocket and pulled out my credit card but there was no ID. That's when I also realized I had an "aesthetic" hole in my pocket. The cards wouldn't normally fall out if it was placed in the pocket normally. But I somehow placed it in just the right position for it to slip. Thankfully, the girls came with me to retrace my steps, staring at the ground to see where it could've possibly fallen.
I think we were so tired that we probably didn't look everywhere we possibly could've. But we trudged home and took naps as soon as we got back. I called the police station too, in case anyone had found it and left my ID there. But that proved to be useless. I was convinced it had been picked up and kept by some teenager to finesse alcohol, probably. When inconvenient things happen, my mom has always told me that these things happen for a reason. I kept telling myself that to keep me from feeling too bad. But it was still annoying to have no ID in New Orleans -- the city of Bourbon Street, jazz clubs, and open container drinking. It worked out that we were all so tired from our regular jobs that all we really wanted to do was chill, eat, and wander.
We ate so much in New Orleans. We ate out for every meal of the day and then ate more meals. I just couldn't stop eating. I don't know how much weight I gained after that excursion. But when I got back from New Orleans, I didn't even have the time to recoup and get back into the gym because as soon as I stepped back in Florida, the country began to shutdown. The coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, was spreading like wildfire in the United States. I had my "friend" Jeremy staying at my place temporarily before he left for Colorado and when I stepped into the apartment, he had the news on. The NBA was canceled for the season. It was crazy to hear. But even then, I still didn't quite understand the gravity of this disease. I didn't realize that it attacked your organs, particularly your lungs, and made it hard to breathe. People were suffocating to death and they couldn't even be with their families to say their last goodbyes because it's so contagious. I didn't know any of that at all yet.
So that following weekend, I went to a St. Patrick's Day party. The hosts were considering canceling it but they didn't and we all went anyway. We didn't stay at the house party for long actually. It was sort of lame, to be frank. We left to hang out at a lesbian couple's place before going downtown to hit the bars. Somehow, I didn't catch the coronavirus then. Or at least, I didn't experience any symptoms. But my best friend was already beginning her self-quarantine up in Pennsylvania and a lot of other people around the country were too. Then, I went to work for the following days after that weekend. I remember my building seemed eerily quieter or calmer. I'm pretty sure people began self-quarantining that week and a few people on my team did as well. I was concerned the entire time but for some reason, I was too afraid to look paranoid.
I eventually began to stay home and work remotely, either at the end of that week or the beginning of next week. But not long after, my company mandated that we work from home if we possibly could. That was all back in the middle of March. Now it's June, almost three months since. I've gone through many bouts of paranoia, anxiety, and worry. I don't leave my house for much. I hardly move. I get up from bed, go to my dining table for work, and sit all day. I'm too scared to even take a walk in my neighborhood for fear of inhaling the coronavirus from a passerby. I don't like going outside much at all, even to my car, for fear of bringing back even a little speck of the virus into my apartment. I get most of my groceries from Instacart, every Thursday, and I wipe everything down in a bleach solution. Soaking each product in bleach and letting it sit for 10 minutes before putting it away. I barely buy meals on UberEats or anything like that. Who knows if the chef coughed on my food or if the UberEats driver sneezed on the bag they handed to me?
A few weeks into the quarantine, I mistook bad asthma symptoms for coronavirus symptoms. My throat was dry and scratchy and one of the symptoms of coronavirus was a sore throat. I checked my temperature incessantly. It was always normal but I couldn't calm myself down. I called my health insurance right before bedtime to talk to a nurse. She told me to just quarantine myself for 14 days and scheduled for me to talk to a doctor the next day. That only scared me further. I couldn't wait.
In the morning, I called the local health department and they scheduled for me to take a test only a few hours later. In hindsight, the only real symptom I had was paranoia. Perhaps, the health professionals on the phone knew this. Maybe not. We were all going crazy from the mysteriousness of this disease after all. But because of my asthma, they let me go ahead and take it. I kept it relatively together until I called my parents to tell them I was going to take the test. That's when I started sobbing. They reassured me that I was fine but I still had to know.
I got to the testing site and I had a long swab put down my left nostril. It was sooo uncomfortable. The left side of the back of my head hurt for almost an hour. It was so bad, I couldn't drive. I pulled into a nearby neighborhood to gather myself. I didn't think it would be that bad because I had just taken the flu test right after I came back from New Orleans. I actually went to the doctor because I had the weirdest headache when I was on the plane. It felt like electricity underneath my skin. Especially in the way that it spread from my right brow to my eye. I could feel the pain in the back of my head too. It hurt more when I touched it but not always. I had never experienced a face/headache like that in my life and I was thousands of feet in the air, and people were freaking out over a killer virus. I thought I was dying.
The pain didn't stop for a few days actually. According to the doctor, it was sinusitis from allergies. It really kills me that my allergies have been so bad lately that I'm experiencing the weirdest symptoms. I had to go on antibiotics and everything. I didn't even get the sniffles first. Just a damn headache. Can you imagine?
But I digress.
After taking the coronavirus test, I was told to quarantine. If I tested positive, I would hear back from them. Otherwise, I won't. They said it would take 7 days. I waited at my phone for longer and heard nothing. And I didn't get extremely sick so I have to believe I didn't have it then.
For a long time, I was contemplating death very deeply. Especially when I had that bout of paranoia. I wasn't even just scared for myself. I was scared for my family. I can't really go back to those thoughts right now. It was almost three months ago and so I've forgotten the depths of it all. Later, I started having trouble sleeping. I couldn't even take naps without being scared of not waking up. I hated that blackness of unconsciousness. That dark place of no control. When you sleep and you don't dream, you only remember going to bed and waking up. What happens when you don't wake up. What do you feel in that prolonged, empty space? It frightened me.
In the past weeks, I've gotten over that. I don't like naps very much but I take them, and take a lot of them. I'm always tired, but that's not really new with me. Naps don't feel as sweet as they used to though because they never feel deserved. There's nothing to take a nap from. I don't do anything. I don't go anywhere.
I have made peace with losing about a year of my youth. I simply want to survive and make sure everyone I love survives too. As everyone does, I miss outside. I miss going out. I miss drinking. I miss dancing. I miss socializing. I miss going to cafes on the weekend and sitting by myself among the locals. I miss traveling. I miss making plans. I miss the possibilities.
A month into the shutdown, I started thinking about guys again. Right before the shutdown, I was in the depths of a huge crush. I initially nicknamed this crush Teddy but I'm going to call him Smokey now, short for Smokey the Bear. That's because I found out he's a smoker. With a bad habit too. I last saw him at a happy hour (which I believe was my last happy hour too) and he decided, for once, to stay out longer with the rest of our group. Every 30 minutes or so, he would just disappear. At some point, I realized that he would reappear smelling like smoke. That's when I put two-and-two together. It made me question things a little bit but also that night, he was engaging in conversation a little too much with my friend and I was getting jealous. I was feeling miserable even though everything else that night was great. That same night, a guy friend (a co-worker who I had been close with) talked about another guy being into me right in front of Smokey, and Taylor told me he looked uncomfortable when he started talking about it. And then later on in the night, we had a "dance moment", which I refrain to talk more about because it's too cheesy for me. But we vibed to the same song together and it was cute.
At the end of the night, you could see hearts in my eyes. When he left, I felt a pang in my heart. I knew I couldn't let things just keep happening like this. Where we only talked every other week, only at happy hours. I was going crazy, feeling like I never saw him enough. So when he left, I asked him out through text. My mistake.
Before that night, it would have been pretty clear to him that I liked him. He is a 30-year-old man, after all (which I always have to remind myself of). At that age, he should be very perceptive, and I believe he was. I think he liked feeling wanted. He had just gotten out of a long 3-year relationship, and it makes sense that he would want to feel desirable again. I get it but I hate that it was me that fell into that trap. It seems no one else did.
But in the time leading up to the big "ask out", I asked him if he would be at a few happy hours and invited him to a few other social events. I tried to play it cool. I would test him, wait for him to text me when the next happy hour came up. And he would. In person, we would be at each other's hips, only talking to each other. He seemed interested in me and he was tall, charming, and had dimples. OF COURSE, I became infatuated with him. I mean, anyone else would. But I'm mad because there were so many other signs that he wasn't interested and I didn't take heed. I know guys very well.
Guys wear their hearts on their sleeves. When they like you, they initiate. They REALLY initiate. They would never have you prying for more. They would never have you waiting. Smokey always made me feel like I wasn't doing enough.
In the back of my mind, I think I knew he didn't like me like that. I remember thinking that no matter what the outcome was, I needed Smokey to know that I liked him or I would explode. So after he left that night, I texted him to ask if he'd want to go out to lunch sometime. And he messaged me back saying something like, "Sure, but I'm still getting over my ex so it's still hard for me right now."
And I read that as "no". It was a "no". The answer had been "no" for a long time. As soon as I felt that I needed to ask him out, I had already lost. Guys who like you will never give you a chance to ask them out. In the past, guys who have expressed interest in me made plans to hang out the same day they met me or the second time. It's the same for other women. I don't believe in women pursuing because we've never had to. We don't have to pursue because the rules of the game are written in pen. This isn't anti-feminist. It's the law of things. Guys go for what they want. It's just how things work. And I disregarded all of it because I was desperate.
So then I was devastated. Not only was I feeling the pain of rejection but I also felt so foolish.
Why did I fall for him and why did I let him catch me slipping when I should have known he wasn't going to catch me?
I didn't sleep well that weekend. My brain kept racing, trying to put together where I went wrong. In everything. In my entire life. So I went to Walmart at around 4 or 5 in the morning and decided to buy a 1500-piece puzzle. I listened to Anita Baker as I put the edges together. I can't remember when I finally went to bed because I spent all of that day putting the puzzle together. I definitely fell asleep at some point in the daytime. And I guess after a few months, I can say I have healed from all of that. Please don't think that I'm an overreacting. I think I'm nuts too. But I'm just trying to be honest about how I felt and feel. I didn't stop thinking about Smokey for a very long time. To be honest, the only thing that really got my mind off him was the coronavirus panic. Can't really think about useless men when you're worried about you and your family dying from a horrific disease.
By the way, I finished the puzzle a month later, once we were all shut into our homes. I had nothing better to do.
I forgot to mention that in response to Smokey's message, I said something along the lines of, "there's no pressure, just let me know". He didn't respond to that. He didn't text me again until almost a month later actually. I was sitting in the airport, about to get on my plane to New Orleans and he texted, "Hey stranger". I can't even explain to you the way my emotions made all types of flips, and flops, and rolls. I was surprised, and then annoyed, and then flattered ... among a bunch of other emotions. Anything and everything that would make sense in such a situation. He wanted to go out downtown and was asking if I was dong anything. I waited a little bit to make him suffer as he made me suffer. I contemplated not responding back at all. But I'm a wuss. I texted him back probably 15 minutes later and told him I was on my way to NOLA. We talked back and forth. I tried to make plans to go out whenever I was back but he said he had to go to this grandfather's funeral in the first weekend I'd be back. I said we'll plan for later then.
We said good nights before my plane took off and that was the last time he messaged me. And stupid me. I thought he would have texted me by now. If that doesn't solidify it, I don't know what will. Sadly, now that my mind has begun to clear from the coronavirus panic, I'm thinking about him again. I guess I just miss him. And I also guess that I'm a little resentful, and a little hopeful. Sometimes I think where he is right now. Is he with his family? Did he get back together with his girlfriend? Does he ever think of me? There's just too much time to think so I keep replaying moments in my head that I'd like to forget. That's what sucks the most about quarantine. I can't make new memories. I can't forget.
I'm going to end this post here. There's a lot of shit happening in this world right now. Every state in the United States is rioting against police brutality and systematic racism against black people. The movement is so large that the public has forced every large company to address the issue for fear of losing their business. People are looting stores. People are peacefully protesting. The police are attacking, disfiguring, and killing people. People are running to social media with tears in their eyes. It's hard to tell who is real and who is just being performative--faking for fear of shame. The Reddit app icon is literally black right now, in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Before last week, it would have been taboo for a company or public figure to associate themselves with Black Lives Matter. And in a week, it's become the exact opposite. The solidarity--both real and fake--is just nothing I've ever seen before. I think it's beautiful and scary. It's beautiful to see how much power there is in the black folk. It's scary to think nothing is going to actually change. We're living in such a weird world right now.
I hope to expand on my feelings on this in another post. All of this deserves another post.
Good night!
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