I just proper cried after a good streak of not for a couple years. Probably good for me but I hate it. At least I can still do it quietly.

Freely offered confirmation that I am missed and valued by whom I sort of gave up chasing after all the hope and romance in me dried up: by itself, I might have choked up momentarily, suppressed it, and got on with my day. News that my uncle died: by itself, I would have fed that to the numbness and dreaded any potential rigamarole to come. But both hit LITERALLY SIMULTANEOUSLY, I mean within the same second, and I guess that kind of twist is enough to break open how upset I am with the hellworld we're stuck in and the isolation that I know I'm going to be stuck with even after everyone else is done with it.

I was already churning up unfocused resentment and frustration because now, after doing everything right, they're telling us our masks aren't good enough, and the main symptom of o-rona is congestion. Bitch, congestion is my life. It bothers me through all seasons and varies completely unpredictably. I can't even start to think about someday leaving this room and interacting with another living soul without the next thing popping up to warn me off it because I'd screw it up anyway. Also been thinking about how the winter holidays have become nothing but a particular note of stress, a sense of time running out, and the feeling of being under siege because it's not safe to go out shopping, which all matches the thing we have year-round now and do not need a double dose of. The central imperative of xmas is to be thinking about xmas, even if you're doing nothing else relevant, and for that, fuck the hell out of xmas right now.

Uncle Don was a fun person and he lived his own way. His home was a trailer on the bank of a Louisiana creek, and he spent winters in Alaska gold mining. He was struck by lightning once. He was hard to get ahold of and didn't have the internet at all until a few years ago. Mom has been trying all day to gather info, heart attack is the best guess, but finding relevant people with info is hard because he was on his own, like me, albeit unlike me.

Right now, I don't know. Back to staring at games and videos just like all week. Though going to bed at 8am and waking at 4am is going to have to change somehow because xmas is in a few days which slates me for an extra weird phone call home.