Useless

I was useless before the quarantine started, but now I really am. I wish that, like everyone else, I could pinpoint exactly where it started: 23, or 24, or however many days ago, when the governor of California shut down the tobacco shop where I stood patiently in line to buy $74 worth of cigarettes to last me a few weeks; when Disneyland decided to close it’s magic gates and stop accepting $194 dollars per person per day for Park-Hopper passes; when all of my closest friends lost their jobs; when my parents sent me an email with instructions for how to reach out to their lawyer if they died; when no one felt safe going outside anymore, but some people did, and they were idiots. 

I wish that I could say THAT was the day that I stopped being a person, but I think it happened slowly, like learning the lyrics to a song you hate because the radio won’t stop fucking playing it. My brain won’t stop boring me to death. I think about doing things all the time, like picking up my sewing kit and making a new jacket, or maybe doing some yoga, frying myself a quesadilla, getting some work done. 

But then I don’t. Instead, I roll over to the the other side of the bed, put my head on a different pillow, let myself slowly get bored with the way that feels while I scroll endlessly through Instagram. Sometimes, I don’t even watch anyone’s stories - I just see how many I can click through as fast as I can before the app glitches out on my hand-me-down phone and closes. Other times, I play phone games til my eyes cross. Then, maybe I put a podcast on and go to sleep. For six hours. In the middle of the day. And wake up at 9pm, bored again. 

I don’t remember what it’s like to have a routine, because I haven’t had one in years. After my last full-time job ended badly like the others, I decided that I would never, ever, ever, have a real job again. It turns out that I decide a lot of things that way. I stopped dating men who like me because it hurt too much when they left. I stopped making my bed because I’d just sleep in in later that morning and mess it up anyway. I stopped applying for writing gigs at coffee shops because I rarely made back the money I spent on lattes with my measly paychecks. I started asking myself, “what’s the point?” and then I stopped feeling anything at all. 

The quarantine isn’t preventing me from cleaning my house or showing up to Zoom meetings on time in my own living room when I don’t even have to put pants on; it’s me. The quarantine didn’t make me lazy; my brain did. I want to scream, but my voice feels like it’s buried. I want to beat my fists into the soft parts of the sides of my head, but they’re phantom limbs these days. Every second of the day feels like the worst peak of a sleep paralysis nightmare that I’m never going to wake up from, because this is just how I am now. Sometimes, I want to die, but that sounds like it would take too much effort. 

So instead, I’ll microwave myself another mini Mac n Cheese bowl from my dwindling supply, fill it to the brim with crushed Cheez-It’s, and swallow. I’m good at that, and it makes me feel warm.