Covid and Musings on Isolation

Howdy, y’all! How’s your week been? Fun? Mine hasn’t. :)

Being Sick

A couple days after I published my first post on here, I tested positive for COVID for the first time. Made it six years and got knocked down as soon as I passed that milestone. As such, I haven’t really done much in the last week other than lay in bed and think and get scared.

I’ve gotten sick a lot lately. Genuinely, when I look back and track my illnesses on the calendar, I have gotten sick more regularly than some people menstruate. It was a major factor in the tension that led me to leave my last job. It’s also a major factor that makes me really anxious about getting and keeping another job. I keep wondering, what if this is how it is now? What if I just keep getting sick forever, and it makes me miss work constantly, until I can’t hold down a job?

I don’t really have any answers for that part of myself. There’s an extent to which I’ve been through this before, and it ended, and I moved on and bettered myself. The main story behind my knit/crochet journey is that I kept getting sick while abroad in Scotland, it turned out to be pneumonia, and then I moved home and had nothing to do so I got really into fiber arts. That experience really led me to get into hobbies I love to this day.

This feels different, for a lot of reasons that are both logical and emotional. I’m sure I could make a Venn Diagram to spell everything out, but it feels exhausting and needlessly contrarian. I’m on the mend from this bout of illness, so for now I’m just. Hoping this will change things. (Please don’t recommend tests and vitamins and habits in the comment sections, I’m sure I’ve tried them all.)

Isolation

One thing that’s different about this illness is the importance of isolation. The past few months, when I’ve gotten sick, I’ve been able to rely on friends and family and not worry about contagion. But COVID is more seriously contagious, so I can’t hang out with people to keep me sane. I still have help, and I can talk to people, but I can’t be in the same room as them for longer than a minute or too.

Frankly, it sucks. I always knew that physical touch was incredibly important to me, and being forced to avoid it is terrible. I can’t decide if it’s been worse to have roommates and not be able to be near them, or to be completely isolated without anyone. That’s not quite true, the former is better because I can still ask for help, especially with feeding myself. But it feels particularly excruciating for someone to be so close and yet so far. I think that phrase is typically used in romance novels, but hey. Words are words.

What I’m Reading

Speaking of words, what words have I been reading? Well, a good chunk of this illness left me with little motivation to read, so I’ve mostly been watching 30 Rock (#throwback) and The Summer Hikaru Died. But, as I heal, my brain slowly comes back online and I need something more challenging. I have put all of The Summer Hikaru Died manga on hold at my local library, but until that gets in, here’s what I’ve been reading.

Wednesday night and Thursday morning, I ran through They Fell Like Stars from the Sky & Other Stories by Sheikha Helawy (0.25in), translated by Nancy Roberts and illustrated by Anna Morrison. This book is one I’m reading for Lesbian Feminist Book Club, which I have ostensibly been a part of for a year now but only read three books for and attended zero meetings. I am hoping to change that this year, but who knows! I was nervous to start this book because of my anthology burnout, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Obviously, it’s quite short (my shortest book of the year, so far), but I also felt like the stories were really seamlessly tied together. I think I’ve been reading some anthologies where the only thing that seems to connect the stories is the author, or even just the general theme, so this was a very happy change. There are parts of this book that genuinely felt like chapters of the same novel, and even the most separate stories felt very congruent. Also, this book introduced me to Umm Kulthum, whose music I listened to aside my reading and greatly enjoyed. She reminded me of a past friend’s music taste, and I hope he gets to hear her someday. I think I’d probably recommend this book to him.

On the other hand, I’ve been making my way through Boys, Beasts & Men by Sam J. Miller (0.88in) since my last post. I enjoy a lot of aspects of this book, but it definitely falls prey to the anthology criticisms I mentioned above. I’ve been trying to move around in this book, not just following the order of the pages but the order of my interest, and that’s definitely helped. I’ve already had several late nights with this book, but that may be more of a problem with my sleep schedule than a rave review of the writing.

I definitely admire Miller for his ability to write from lots of different perspectives, but it also makes it hard to feel like the stories are very connected. There’s a small through line story that reminds me of Clive Barker’s Books of Blood series, which makes it clear to me that this is a true anthology in its lack of connection. If I were more interested in anthologies at this moment, I’d like it a lot more, so I’d definitely recommend this book to someone who is an anthology fan.

Last week I had 63.36in left, and I’ve read 1.13in this past week, so I now have 62.23in left. Thanks again for reading, and I wish health and wellness unto us all!