#dear aether

[dearaether]

I got home last night from my nieces in Montreal. I shut down so hard when I'm there and become an actor. I could support them for months straight (at the cost of my health) but each time I come home and take off the armour I'd worn, I'm so exhausted I can't get out of bed.

They feel like two different lives and two different mes, each of whom can only talk to the other through fragmented memories.

Idk if I mean this poetically or literally.

[dearaether]

Dear Aether,

2 April

ngl, I'm worried. Mom is 63. She has diabetes and hypertension. She works in a hospital and while her job can be done remotely, her boss doesn't believe COVID is a serious enough issue to approve her request. Because she doesn't directly treat patients, she has no PPE whatsoever.

Aether, you know how I struggle with pattern recognition: that I link too many things, organizing events and observations into categories that are too narrowly defined to ever accurately reflect the world.

13 years ago today, my dad was admitted to ICU. 3 days later, he died of pneumonia, drowning as his lungs fell apart. Acute respitory failure resulting from a different pandemic: HIV/AIDS. As far as I have experienced, pandemics are what kill parents.

And so it's been an argument with myself every day to not climb down into the rabbit hole. As my brain meanders and loops around all day, it keeps rediscovering the same pattern, interjecting itself into my Netflix haze: "You could lose both parents to different pandemics."

[dearaether]

note to self:

I'm falling in love with the person you're becoming ❤️