14 Comments

Wonderful, tragic, beautiful. Thanks man.

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Deeply resonant. Thank you

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Oct 14, 2020Liked by Luke O'Neil

Damn. I also bought a house in the time of Covid and having moved away from friends, family and the places I love to do it, that last paragraph really resonates. I remember the lawyer's assistant bringing us the keys and being like, "no smile? you're supposed to be happy!" and I I just lied and told her that I don't get excited about things. Thanks for this.

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Can’t find you on IG. Is it public? Thanks, this was a great read as always. Like nothing else out there.

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Goddamn it, your last day of hope was so similar to mine -- also at a Bernie rally but in Virginia -- that I'm crying a little at work. Thank you as always for this.

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Oct 12, 2020Liked by Luke O'Neil

the before times slice of life genre fits so neatly between the balm of nostalgia and the agonizing grief of today.

my last normal day was a terrible day. my dog had been slowly dying of cancer for a few months before all this came crashing down. my parents had been sick most of january for no discernable reason. not covid, but flu then pneumonia and all the shit inbetween. feeling particularly pessimistic on a walk in january i told my recovering mother, with my dog on my mind who walked with us and wouldn't stop squatting for a piss because of the tumors on her bladder, that i had a bad feeling about this year. i said i see a lot of death coming. guess i was right.

in mid-february i saw two long distance friends i met on the internet a million years ago on some anime message boards back when the internet was differently dangerous and decentralized. one friend hosted the other two of us, me hopping over from the state next door and the other flying all the fuck the way in from london. covid was background noise at this point. the east coast's problem. we spent the whole time reminiscing about the last time we all saw each other four years before that and i left that trip thinking well that specific 3-person friendship is probably done because if you're gonna spend 4 days talking about the past and not have anything new to talk about next time, maybe there's not a lot in common anymore. i was half right, i talk to one still, the one that's nearer. she spent most of the year alone in quarantine and i've been worried about her mental state. i realized soon after the trip that i wouldn't be seeing our friend in london any time soon anyway and i just didn't have it in me to keep the nostalgia times rollin'.

my dog finally had a massive seizure the night before my mother and i would've otherwise left for my first ever vacation abroad (for both my 30th and a self-given reward for finishing my masters in 2019) that we had cancelled just days before. we spent the first weeks of march nervously following the news and pitching back and forth flimsy displays of bravado: let's just fucking do it, it'll be fine, we're healthy and fit aside from that whole pneumonia thing you're still dealing with, etc. but europe closed down all at once basically so the decision was made for us.

then the seizure happened and i was like fuck, i would've had to have been at the airport by 5am in our original timeline and i already had been nervous about leaving my dying dog for two weeks with my father. if my father had to take her and have her put down and i wasn't there for it i would've lost my shit so maybe this is for the better? like most people my relationship with my father is contentious as he is an emotionally unavailable trump fanboy and i feel too much all the time and also nothing at all but i cried when elizabeth warren dropped out (it's fine you can drag me_). i also believe in the bernie platform and that strokes concert was, indeed, lit. spent my whole youth wanting to see the strokes live and it never happened but they played for him? good enough. i didn't cry when he dropped out because i was pretty catatonic by that point. i contain multitudes.

so i called the vet when they opened the next morning and had an awkward conversation where i scheduled the death of my dearest loved one and the receptionist hummed a little and said they were pretty busy that day. would 4 in the afternoon work? i said i guess it would have to and we finalized it. i had a day with my miserable, pain racked dog but i didn't really know what to do with her. i stayed near her but i also had to do some remote work and fill out an application for a job i already applied to and submitted an application for. they always make you do it twice. it was for a job i don't remember because i didn't get it but it wasn't anything interesting or useful, a constant my whole resume reflects. i thought the masters would help and it hasn't yet. it's in criminal justice which is something i don't believe in quite the same way anymore. it makes my options limited now because i'm not gonna perpetuate that bullshit. thought i could do some good from within but that's a lie and it's not possible. anyway.

when there was an hour left i put everything away and sat with my dog. i had been pretty chill up until that point thanks to the depression not letting anything through the fog but it sort of did hit me then and i sat there and cried all over her. we'd been through a lot, she spent three years in a shelter where no one would take her then nine years with me even through the one time i detonated my life and started over. she still liked me after that even though i have only ever been lost, sad, and mediocre. dad didn't want to come to her appointment saying it was too much for him and that tracks for what i know about him. so i just went with my mom. dad showed up anyway a few minutes later. we held her and she went to sleep, as the vet said, and then i tried to set her head down on the ground but i expected muscular resistance to it out of habit and instead dropped her on the tile. fuckin stupid.

then we talked about payment. what's a few hundred dollars more after all the thousands spent trying to get her this far.

i texted my one close friend directly after that i could use what would probably be our last dinner together because the covid walls were closing in on us. i went to our favorite vegan restaurant and ordered house tofu but covid times already hit these guys and their to-go operation wasn't very well stocked so they didn't have anymore. took the inferior steamed tofu to my friend's house and we debated for a few minutes whether or not the utensils and boxes needed to be sanitized first. we risked it. i was hungry. after some disney feel good classics i said well i guess this is it for a while. see you some time. and then i didn't see her again until august, which i only did because in july my dad got bored of quarantine (his words) and went out to play pool at a bar and brought covid back with him and infected me and my mom. so i knew i was inoculated for a little while. confronted with his selfishness he parroted his buddies on fox and said well we were all gonna get it anyway. mom got pretty sick for a week and a half and my smell and taste i have given up hope will ever fully come back, but we're all alive. dad's 100% fine, of course. barely affected him.

anyway. march 20th was my last normal day that wasn't normal at all. in the scheme of things, at least there was a solid line between life and death and decisions that impacted alternate timelines and whatnot. whereas now there doesn't appear to be any of that. still looking for a new job that doesn't make me want to die constantly. hating myself for not being grateful enough for having one already and upset that i can't embrace the bright side of how little this all has impacted me. wah wah. thanks for reading if you did and if you didn't, oh well, it's just some cathartic rambling anyway. also thanks for the content. your work has done a lot for me.

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