For the second diary in a row, we begin the story of our intrepid hero at midnight! (As you can tell, reader, I’m grasping at straws to make my life interesting this far into my self-induced quarantine.) In my last diary, way back in February, I mentioned that I’d stopped taking a sleeping medication that I’d been on for far too long and that I’d been experiencing rebound insomnia. At this point, I think I’ve just settled back into old habits, encouraged by quarantine. My sleep schedule is typically as follows: wake up at one p.m., pull an all-nighter, pass out around 6 p.m. Rinse and repeat. It’s definitely not healthy but, hey, it works! Also, who are you— my mom? Sleeping for thirteen hour stints does really make me wish that I could hibernate like a bear but c’est la vie!
It’s the first week of the summer semester, technically the second day of it, so I’m looking at two classes and part-time work for the next ten-ish weeks. I never thought I’d be so grateful about having to work! I didn’t get much done yesterday because I was (in theory) helping a friend pack up to move to Indianapolis (we were absolutely not productive). Between 12 and 1 a.m., I read for pleasure on my phone while my sweet old lady purrs and headbutts me from the top of the couch. Around 1, I make a cup of coffee and settle in to ride out the anxiety I always get from caffeine, jumping around YouTube in an effort to make a quiet playlist I can work to. Around 1:30 I remember that today’s a diary day and begin to write up the riveting account of my morning so far. Around 2, I decide to clear up my workspace (procrastinate) and organize my books. Then I change the water in the vase of flowers my friend got me and pull out the dead buds and leaves (procrastinate!) before settling back at my temporary desk, a.k.a. my tiny kitchen table. Ah, my feng has been shui’d. I eye the pollen on the table left by one of the giant red flowers but am ultimately too lazy to so much as swipe my hand across to wipe it off. I think briefly about dropping out of school and escaping to a random forest to commune with nature but remember that I hate bugs.
I collect some new files for work that I’ll need to go through and put in their proper places and send off an email before realizing that I just contacted a professor at 2:30 in the morning like a totally normal person. Nice! Dr. C, if you’re reading this… sorry. I promise I am able to have a regular sleep schedule. Sometimes. When the planets are aligned. By 3, my tiny (tiny!!) kitchen table and its accompanying chair (in addition to my inability to sit up straight) give me the excuse to get up and do some backbends to crack my back. I flop over backwards and I hear crack crack crack like a zipper up my spine. It’s one of my favorite ways to freak people out, so I thought that I’d share it with all of you! One of my hips also pops which gives me that split-second panic where I wait for the pain of having somehow dislocated it before the irrationality of it passes. I sit back down, look at all of the work I haven’t done, and wish for the hundredth time that COVID-19 didn’t exist. I miss my family, I miss the lack of paranoia about contact with other people, and I miss my study spot in the library. It’s hard to get work done in a tiny apartment with two cats and a neighbor with horrible taste in loud music. I water my budding plants and turn on their UV light. Despite everything, helping something grow has never failed to make me feel better.
I work at the table for about twenty minutes until my bones say “no more!” and I move to a tried and true alternative: rolling out my yoga mat and making an Adult Blanket Fort For Work Purposes. During my transition to Floortown, I check my phone to see a message from a new friend of mine who’s currently going through a tough time, K. Despite everything going on in their life, they say they’ve sent me gifts in a game we both play. I thank them and tell them that they’re a good friend and a good person and settle back into work. I get up at one point to turn on my heater and it rattles to life about as quietly as a car from the 90s. While I’m up I decide to make a mini-bagel and eat it on the floor like a grown up because I’m my own boss as long as my mom isn’t around.
I start getting a headache around 3:30, and at about 3:45 I’ve reached the stage of sleep deprivation where I start seeing things out of the corner of my eye. Cool! It’s usually just the cat, half hidden by the couch, staring me down. She’s completely black so it’s normal for me to see yellow eyes staring out of the darkness at me. I quickly Google “does my cat want to kill me” but the results are inconclusive. I’ll settle on “no, she loves you a whole lot!” Awww. I work until 4:20 and then decide that being awake sucks, and I turn in.
I get a gibberish text while walking upstairs and wonder vaguely which company has sold my information to a scammer this time before walking into my bedroom to see that the cat has peed on the couch again. I swap out the chucks (which I bought solely to protect this couch so, hey, at least I’m getting my money’s worth) and climb into bed. I scroll through social media on my phone until 5 and set an alarm before closing my eyes, tossing and turning. I come out of a dream about fantasy creatures trying to get an apartment around 11, turn my AC on, and roll back over. My chest continually lights up with anxiety from the last of the caffeine from this morning, but I’m resolute. I will not get out of bed until noon! At 11:53 I give up and take my medicine. I swap out the cats, start a load of laundry that I will forget about, and do my morning routine in the bathroom. I dyed my hair last night and it turned out darker than I’d planned but it successfully covered up the fading purple so I can’t complain.
(I took the chance during quarantine before Zoom meetings began to have fun with my hair, something I’ve never done before. First it was bleached blonde, then dyed teal, then bleached again and dyed a pastel purple! The last time I saw a local friend, A, it took her almost two hours to say “M, I love you but your hair looks awful!” I’d laughed and said, “I know, right? I love it!” If people were already staring because of the mask, why not give them something else to look at?)
At 12:08, I return to my blanket fort floor office and bang my head against my keyboard some more in an attempt to get work done. A friend, B, reaches out to check up on me and I check in with A about the woman who is supposedly buying her couch. I find a very important gif of a goat and send it to my friend Br— goat gifs are our love language. I try to check up on her as often as I can since she’s an EMT in an Indy-adjacent town and I worry. I reread what I’ve written of my diary so far (I’m so funny!) before putting on some music and thinking about making another bagel (A got Panera without me :c ). Br responds and we rapidfire some goat gifs back and forth at the same time that B and I talk about her re-dying her hair. K and I talk some about how they were forced to take care of their grandmother overnight while everyone in the house made comments about their sexuality and gender identity. I offer to adopt them even though we’re only two years apart. (It’s mostly a joke but also… is it?) I decide that my apartment is bad for work so I get in the car, check my mail, and go over to A’s so we can work together. She compliments my hair, we discuss Panera, and settle in. After a bit of work, I peer pressure her into looking at local PhD programs and she gets very excited about it.
Around 2:30, A and I take a break and grab some fast food for lunch. Two of the workers are wearing matching cowprint masks, which is adorable. Mine is a plain black. When we get back to her apartment, I get a text from my sister H about our father and give her a call. Synopsis: he’s a bad parent. Surprise! I get her laughing before too long and before she ends the call, she invites me to her birthday party on Monday. She tells me that it wouldn’t be her birthday without me there. Awwwwwww. I tell her that I’ll keep a six foot distance from everyone but promise to be there. (Crap, what do thirteen-going-on-fourteen year olds like?) I eat my sandwich and dip my fries in my shake, talking to A about the latest family drama. I’ve been brief in this entry because, honestly, reader, there are some things you just don’t share with strangers. I will tell you that it takes a lot to restrain myself from driving to Florida and decking that man in the face. I type up some more of this diary while A tackles packing away her kitchen in boxes. She’s moving to Indianapolis, which is only about an hour away, but it seems very far right now. I sneakily look at real estate in the Indy area, since most of my friends are in, around, or south of the city. Returning to my hometown in Northern Indiana doesn’t hold much appeal for me at the moment. My sisters might be moving to Kentucky next year, after their mother’s divorce. Sometimes it seems like everything happens all at once, even in the middle of a pandemic standstill.
I work until 3:30 while A packs, and then we take a short trip to campus to get a walk in and drop off some of A’s library books. We get back around 4:30 and I gather my things, leaving at 4:40 to go home. I get home around 4:45 to find my neighbor’s girlfriend parked in my spot. She tries to talk to me about my cat in the window but I am no longer able to communicate with strangers like a sane person so I flub a sentence, visibly cringe, and then immediately escape inside. I take a shower, feel like a human again, and sit down to play video games for a bit with a glass of juice. I tap out around 5:30 when my mother sends me a video of my step-father taking his first motorcycle ride since getting his license renewed. She’s incredibly nervous, but I think she’s just a worry wart. I open up my patio curtains and watch the sun light up the outside world, missing the 45 minute drive between my hometown and the Indiana Dunes that Br and I drove once a week every summer in high school and college.
More people arrive at my neighbor’s around 6 and he begins a small get-together with shouting and blaring music. The perks of apartment life! The cat falls asleep on my right arm, trapping me in place, so I end up reading on my phone until he decides to allow me to move at 7:30. At 8:30 I realize how unproductive I’ve been today as far as classwork goes and kick into gear. “Kicking into gear” for me today means sitting up, thinking “man, I should do some stuff,” walking vaguely around my kitchen, and then sitting back down. At least I’m typing this diary in real time. Time flies when deadlines are near! I spray the cat for daring to eat my flowers (the squirt bottle is always full and at my side, but this weirdo likes it. What kind of cat likes being sprayed??) and tap tap tap on my keyboard. Have I mentioned that I miss the library? I text my sister asking what she wants for her birthday, claiming that I am old and uncool and out of touch with the youths. Her mother tells me that she wants a white Thrasher shirt which makes me laugh. Ah, H, we’re more alike at 13 than you will ever know. I skim through the Zumiez website while I wait for her to respond and consider asking if she’d want me to buy her her first skateboard. H takes forever (more than five minutes) to get back to me so I go on a Google spiral about skateboards and DIY decks. I always wanted to learn how to skateboard when I was her age but I was too much of a nervous wallflower to do anything that might draw attention. I would love to live vicariously through H. I make mini-bagels while I wait and forcefully remove my weirdo cat from the fridge, where he enjoys spending his time. The wifi cuts out yet again.
At 9:41, I catch a glimpse of the clock and officially call this day a wash. I go soak my old lady bones in the tub for as long as the water stays hot (in an apartment, that translates into ‘not long’). I switch out the cats and hop back onto the internet to join up with K online in the video game we both play. I visit their island and meet a friend of theirs and we mess around for a while, chatting and whacking each other with butterfly nets. I leave their island just before midnight and head back to my own, placing my character in a little garden I made full of purple flowers with a little sign I designed that says “K’s Garden.” K’s had a long week. When I send them the picture I take in the garden, they cry and say it’s thoughtful, and silly, and just what they needed. My diary day ends.