2021-08-22 / 7:19 p.m.

Maybe a pandemic was just what I needed. I'd been awaiting a reason to never see anybody again and it's possible that this was it. So many people ambling around unafraid and careless, spilling over with misinformation. Shouting at me that I'm wrong because they don't know what it's like to be sick for anything longer than a few days. A week at best. But I was born into this and my body has felt nothing short of miserable for one thousand, six hundred and five days (who's counting?).

I close my blinds, exasperated that it's still summer and the heat is returning. I wonder what I used to do with myself, how I filled my days before all of this began. But there was no before this began, because I always locked myself inside and wondered if there was something inside of me that was very sick. I pushed down that feeling for years at the urging of doctors who all but laughed at me. Why couldn't I accept that I was healthy, and just learn to be happy and grateful to be alive? It's because sometimes I was certain that I knew the truth, despite anybody else maybe once seeing it from my perspective. I was doing such a good imitation of somebody who wasn't sick that I even fooled myself.

I don't want the friends that I've had for my whole life and I have no interest in having new people around. Having to smile and to explain how disability works. How capitalism pushes and pushes at people like me, allowing us to fall between the cracks. Fun fact: eighty per cent of people with a disability weren't born disabled. Fun fact: it can happen to any of us. I sound as though I've lost my grasp on reality when I get going, I know I do, but I can't help myself. If you lived this way, you'd be angry too.

The vaccines made my legs hurt and still I felt so grateful to have a lifeline again. To feel like I could leave the house again and to not just watch people's Instagram stories of their shitty house parties while we're in the middle of our third lockdown and I haven't seen my boyfriend in a matter of months. This year has shaken me more than the last. My thoughts are in disarray. I've been told to lean into the discomfort more times than I can count, and I have, and through that loneliness I've found a comfortable solitude. This is what it means to care for myself and the vulnerable people around me. I want very little more.