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This started out as a story time email.
As my isolation continues and I get even deeper into both my introspection and looking for things to do that are marginally productive, like going through old documents where I found this.
I think I need my therapist again.

I was crossed eyed when I was a kid.

I hope you weren’t expecting a sexy story.

My libido is through the roof and I just can’t right now.

One of my earliest memories was my mother shrieking in the kitchen, I had to wear an eye patch. It gave me a headache and bandages in the 70’s were gooey and sticky and it hurt coming off. I was hiding behind my dad’s chair in the living room. She found me and the patch went on. That probably happened every other day for 100 days.

The idea was to force the muscles in my weak eye to work by covering my good eye.

Didn’t work.

I could read when I was 22 months old. We had those Disney read along records, and I just taught myself. But with the patch on I couldn’t read. I still have a hard time reading with just my right eye, I can see the words, but they don’t compute exactly.

I had corrective surgery when I was just a bit over 2 years old.

My parent’s friends from Michigan had bought a farm in Ontario a year or 2 before my folks and they remain close to this day. Carolyn and Todd. Carolyn gave me a stuffed dog as a surgery present. She was my magic mama.

This story was prompted by me opening the closet in my attic room last night and seeing Snoopy in the corner.

Yep, I still have him. And yes, he was part of the important ‘stuff’ that came with me from Newfoundland.

A few years back my girlfriend was very into Feng Shui and decided we couldn’t have stuffed animals in our rooms, especially not on our beds. They are bed guardians and keep potential lovers away. Snoopy will be emerging from the closet and making his way to my bed sometime today. I have a lover, the only one I ever want. A stuffed dog can guard my bed while I wait.

My eye doctor was this really sweet old man. He had polio when he was young and was in a wheelchair. I wish I could remember his name, I can see his face and hear his voice as I write this. He was the one who diagnosed me with Poland Syndrome weirdly. He studied odd physical deformities as a hobby.

I remember the old wooden box full of glass lenses. The dark of his office. The bright lights in my eyes and wearing too big sunglasses when we left because of the drops he put in to dilate my pupils made my eyes super light sensitive. The clack of the machinery, ‘which one is better, one or two’.

I remember getting a chocolate bar at the hospital gift shop if I behaved.

I ended up in that hospital a lot between 2 and 19. First my eye then my tit.

My poor mom. She wanted a child, tried so hard for 7 years to conceive before I was born, and she got me, a weird fixer upper.

I say that with a bit of bitterness. She has, as the years gone on, expressed resentment that I needed more time and effort than her other daughters. Physically and emotionally. But let’s skip over that.

I remember wanting to take Snoopy into the O.R. More shrieking from my mother. A nurse said he couldn’t come but compromised by letting me take some plastic zoo animals in with me, I can only assume because they could be sterilized and Snoopy could not.

I don’t remember much from the hospital. Just sitting on the floor in a hospital gown in the playroom playing with those plastic animals. Everything was white and the sun was streaming in the window. Then laying on the stretcher with a rhino in my tiny hand.

The next thing I remember is waking up and throwing up a lot. And I was blind. Not really but I was maybe 26 months old, so I couldn’t comprehend what was happening. My eyes were bandaged. Apparently, I had a reaction to the anesthetic, and they couldn’t wake me up properly for a few days.

Next memory after that was waking up on the couch at home and my eyes were stuck shut. Like every bit of eye pook I would ever have had appeared overnight and was gluing my eyelashes together.

I remember thinking that I had gone blind forever. Todd’s dad was blind and my tiny child’s brain was afraid that I had looked at an eclipse, like I thought he had done. He didn’t, but I believed that for years.

I remember being quiet as a mouse and touching my eyes even though I wasn’t supposed to, trying to get the gook off. I succeeded and the process repeated itself for at leas a week. Wake up blind, quietly unstick my eyes.

I can still cross that one eye. I looked at some selfies today and in 2/3 that one eye looks a little crossed still. Maybe it’s me seeing things with my overly critical way of seeing myself.

There is a 98% chance of becoming near sighted after the corrective surgery. Something about tightening the muscles altering the shape of the eye itself.

So, I have been wearing glasses since I was 3 or 4. Tiny little kid, with glasses and a bad bowl cut. My mom also had a penchant for giving me perms. I was a terribly awkward child. I had a really bad stutter on top of everything else. Speech therapist said my vocabulary was too big for my mouth. I managed to get over it by the time I started kindergarten. It comes back if I am stressed or if I see, hear or read about someone with a stutter.

We moved when I was 7 and I started grade 2 at a different rural school. Not fun.

People like to say that I am used to being told I am pretty. I am really not. It wasn’t something I was told as a kid, even into my teenage years. I was just awkward and angry by then and had the added yuck of braces and one of those fake boobs that resemble a chicken cutlet they give to women who had mastectomies stuffed in my bra.

This is also why I worry about being a burden. At some point I realized if I just tried to do things on my own, I wasn’t bothering anyone. If I just stayed away from people as much as possible, I wasn’t bothering anyone. It’s just part of who I am now.

Some days I am that scared little girl hiding behind the big brown chair, somehow knowing I was making it worse the longer I hid and louder my mom screamed and still being unable to move. I still feel so insignificant that if I hide long enough, I will be forgotten. Part of me wants to be.

And, as I have wasted another day, scrolling through social media, instead of doing anything that might possibly improve my situation, I honestly don’t know how to break out of this.

All I have to do is commit to and survive some discomfort to strengthen some long atrophied muscles.

I have to stop hiding and I don’t know how.

I think everyone has a hard time admitting they are wrong about certain things.

For me, it’s people.

If I see something in someone it is because I SEE it. And usually it is the color of roses and good. I see potential.

Something in me recognizes the best version of them, and for a long time, that was all I saw.

I got hurt in the process. Lost time and money. Felt betrayed. Happened three times in the last few years. I could joke and say I was drunk, but the actual truth is, I took a huge leap of faith and grabbed onto everything and everyone I could to break my fall, instead of just falling. I regressed to a former version of myself in a lot of ways. I am out now, and I am alright.

Level up.

6 years ago I accidentally decided to put the work in and deal with myself. It didn’t start out that way, but when I realized what was happening, I stuck with it.

Before that I have no trouble admitting I had no idea who I was or what I wanted. How could I? I had been half of myself for my whole life almost.

In high school I toned myself down to fit in. College years, when I should have been fucking up and finding myself, I had a baby on the boob that I had to keep alive. And I was so scared of no one wanting me with a kid, because single mom was the worst thing I could be until I upped the ante and I was a single mom stripper, I settled into a dissatisfying string of relationships that lasted until my kid graduated high school.

I did not weigh my partners against anything at all. If they wanted me and I wanted them. That was enough. I had no idea who I was, so it was easier to blend into them than to be alone and figure all that out. They weren’t all bad exactly. Some were fucking horrible. I look back at a couple fondly. No hard feelings. But I know I did not love them because I had no idea what that meant at all.

I was not overly choosy about friendships either.

I really just wasn’t feeding nor feeling my soul in the slightest.
I never listened to my gut.

Everything is different now. I literally function on instinct. I rarely question my intuition.

Got me this far.

I have also met people wherein any interaction with them is the equivalent of biting down on tinfoil. I avoid them like the plague. Somewhere in my heart of hearts I know they have some really vile secret just under their skin and I don’t care to find out what it is.

Some people I am pulled to like gravity. No explanation, just am.

I keep meaning to go back and delete the old posts about the fake soldier boy.

He was next level insane, but alas. We dated for less than 30 days and I was in Florida for 22 of them. It is easy to fool me over text. Just ask the catfish Poet.

Every time I go back through ye olde blog to do so. I stop.

And I will tell you why.

I am okay being wrong.

I reread an old post today entitled Penance and Peace.
https://www.ourladyoflustandgrace.com/penance-and-peace.html

I just had to think back long and hard about who I was talking about. Newfoundland seems to have caused a shift in my reality wherein I can’t remember if I was there for 22 months or 84 years. It was Cruz. Not my greatest relationship. Far from the worst. Killed some time, we had fun, until we didn’t, and I walked.

Doesn’t matter. None of it matters because it is the past and I am not her anymore.

I am okay being wrong.

I am okay with everything I ever was. Stupid, smart, sober, fucked up, slutty, pious. Doesn’t matter. I learned from all of it and built the version of me who is writing this to you now. I like her.

I read the end of the aforementioned article this morning and felt peaceful.

I know what it is like to dwell in the crazy underground shit filled garage of rock bottom. And it is a long climb out. I know what it is like to be clean for a while and fall right back into that pit of despair.

Rock bottom is the most solid foundation to build yourself from.

“I used to be…” is an empowering statement. It comes when you can accept your flaws and leave them behind you.

But enough about that. Sorta.

Let’s talk about the plague.

At the beginning of this, I made some statement about people behaving like lemmings wherein one saw a shadow and didn’t check to see if it was a cloud or a hawk and they all ran off a cliff.

Little did I know, Disney made that up with some rather clever camera work considering it was 1950ish and since then we have all decided this was the truth. Then, 50ish years later, along comes the internet, 70ish years later I post a status about it and my mind is officially blown.

https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=wildlifenews.view_article&articles_id=56

If this is not the most perfect example of what the fuck is going on right now, I don’t know what is.

I can admit that I was wrong about so many things. Lemmings, exes. Trusting this one or that one. Not doing right by my child and the consequences that still exist. That one time I was really high going home in a cab and mistook the Sheraton Hotel sign for a low red moon and never knew the truth until taking another cab 12 years later, sober this time and when I saw it, I howled at myself.

Are we, as a group, going to be able to step back and realize we were wrong about this virus?

I see people staunchly defending their fear like pro-lifers picketing outside a clinic.

I am off social media for a few days.

There is an annoying trend happening wherein my supposed friends are goading me into arguments.

The truth is, 15% of the population has had this already with zero complications. Quite possibly more. Which puts the fatality rate down around .0019%. There is an undeniable offset of traffic fatalities and other causes of death that have dropped dramatically due to the entire world being indoors. And the 2018 flu season claimed a greater number of lives 80 000 respectfully, the numbers might match by the time this is over, but the global fatality rate is already starting to drop, just like the other countries that had it before us.

But if I say it’s not that bad, I am a monster.

Am I really? Or can I just do math and think logically instead of emotionally.

Zero part of me has any desire to gloat or say, I told you so. I realize all of these are human beings with families and loved ones. The ripple effect ramifications of our planetary reactions to this are terrifying at best.

Of course I want to be right, means life can resume without fear. But some of you have developed Stockholm syndrome with this virus. I have been in abusive relationships. I remember lying to myself and others trying to justify staying, and all it did was prolong my hurt.

I will be okay admitting if I am wrong. But we all need to be able to do that, and we need to do it soon.

There is about to be a reckoning and we get to decide how this goes. Let’s make it smooth, please.

Been a bit restless today, did not feel like writing until now.

Got my period this morning and other than thinking I was a useless worthless piece of shit for the bulk of the day before yesterday and crying about Jake and Amy last night, oh and doing bad math on antibody numbers. I have skated through this one okay. They aren’t all awful. I get a freebie every now and again.

Pain is manageable.

I scrubbed and blessed my room on the new moon in anticipation of being a sad, bed ridden zombie girl hosting some kind of hacking ripping tearing burning Viking skirmish in my uterus. But as it stands, I am alright.

The floor is already needing a mop again and that ain’t happening. It is actually hot in the attic and my darling man child left his cats with me for a bit so…no open door until they go. I have sky lights, no openable windows. So no extra exertion shall occur upon this day.

So be it. This is temporary. The period, the attic, the cats, the quarantine. Everything is temporary on a long enough timeline.

I think we are past the point of no return, and I have no desire to go backwards.

Anyone listening? My prediction is you have about 34 days left to do whatever it is you promised yourself you would do if you had time.

Before all this happened…
I had a plan.
Didn’t really plan past June. Not far anyways.
Newfoundland, states, Owen Sound.
Lather, rinse, repeat.

I don’t have a plan now.
I have money and travel vouchers.
I have a car that’s no longer encased in ice that I can now afford to fix.
Another car I can buy or trade or whatever.

And I have faith.

I am actually okay not knowing. This is the first day I could say that and mean it.

I really think everything is going to be okay.
And maybe my plans weren’t the best version of what they could be.
Maybe this will be bigger and better than I could have planned on my own.

Definitely.
(happy sigh)

I didn’t plan on going to Arizona, but I went, and I had a good time. I didn’t plan my last trip to Wolf, but fuck I am glad it happened.

Maybe I can’t plan big enough. But I still want to see Graceland.

When I was young, we had one radio station that came in clearly. CKNX. A lot of Canadian bands and a lot of generic crap. They played old comedy sketches on Sunday nights. It was heavy on top 40’s and the can con.

My dad’s best friend had the most amazing record collection. Stacks and stacks of vinyl. They always had music playing when we went to visit. God I loved their house. No furniture that couldn’t be climbed on. Trees for outdoor climbing. Nothing but cows and fields for days. And so many toys and good things to eat. The house of pink applesauce. I went back a few years ago and it is still somewhat the same. The worn out couches are new worn in couches. The revolving door of barn cats all have new faces and new names. The woodstove is new, kitchen too. But the vinyl and turntable remain.

My mom always had the radio on, but it wasn’t the same. I didn’t have to wait for a song to come on; I could choose what I wanted to hear, and it was glorious. I think the adults thought it was cute that 10 year old me wanted to listen to Sting and the Velvet Underground. But my generation grew up listening to Rumors, took us a long while to figure out what players only love you when they’re playin’, and laying me down in the tall grass and doin’ my stuff meant. It’s funny how uncensored our childhoods were.

My dad has also stood on the corner in Winslow Arizona. He loves the Eagles.

I had a musical childhood.

I also had trouble sleeping as a kid and my dad bought me a double cassette player. I loved it. Did not help me sleep at all because I would just stay up and listen to music, but I was happy. He and his best friend, realizing I had a thing for music, made me tapes from vinyl.

It is how I got introduced to Peter Gabriel. I heard In your Eyes on the radio one night coming back from dance class in the car with my dad and we had a conversation about Genesis and Phil Collins. It didn’t make sense to me that something so beautiful could have come from something so generic. And a day later I had a copy of that album for my little ghetto-blaster tape deck thingee.

It remains part of my definition of love to this day.

Part of me wanted to fit in with my friends and listen to pop and part of me loved being in my room alone and listening to this next level deep shit. Then grade 8 happened and the Joshua Tree came out and my musical tastes went one way and the other kids kept listening to Whitney and Madonna.

In addition to the album So, I had a copy of Graceland by Paul Simon. We listened to Simon and Garfunkel live in Central Park so often when I was little. I find his voice really soothing. Graceland is playing right now.

I listened to it before I went to the festival in Arizona.

There’s a line that says, “take this child orphan to Tucson Arizona, give her the wings to fly through harmony and she won’t bother you no more.” I went to Tempe, but still. Love that line. Had to hear it while I was packing.

And then there is now, or what was supposed to be now. I was going to take Attica to Pensacola for the swimming, NOLA for the magic, Shreveport because of True Blood and I really want to go to Memphis.

The line is “for reasons I cannot explain there’s some part of me wants to see Graceland.” I can explain. Its from the song.

And I too want to stand on the corner in Winslow, Arizona.

And I have to go here too… future me does anyways

So there I was and there you were
All black and white but you colour
Dry season in the town of Broome
I found my staircase to the moon
John Butler, Just Call

But before that happens

I have a reason to believe we all will be received in Graceland.

There’s a pic of me and my girlfriend Cheryl. I think it was my birthday 3 years ago, I’m mocking her duckface and holding a cigarette.

It’s weird to see myself holding a smoke. Even though I smoked a lot.

I started quitting a year ago.
I was away and I haven’t really seen much of my friend’s for the last couple years, so they forget that I quit. I smoked for 30 years. A year is barely a drop in the bucket of time.

Cheryl is coming home tomorrow.

“When I get back we can have a bottle of wine” she said.

“Babe, I quit drinking, remember?”

I didn’t know my last drink was going to be my last drink.

And honestly? I don’t exactly remember what it was.

Logic dictates it was really shitty whiskey at a really shitty strip club I was working at before the end of the world.

They had $2.50 bar rail Tuesdays and I know the Tuesday prior I had gotten tipsy and weepy. So I decided not to work Tuesdays anymore.

So it was probably a shot or 2 the following week. Some time in February.

I would not have chosen that for my last libation.

And really? I should have stopped after the blackout in St. John’s where I wasted a night having a pukefest whiskey meltdown and was totally mortified.

But I didn’t.

Habits are hard and I hated the place I was working.

Hate is not a good reason to drink.

I drank more than I should have in high school. I was very violent and acted out badly. I destroyed property and friendships. I decided smearing toothpaste on a boy’s bed was a good plan. Threw a can of frozen orange juice at my other friend’s head and left a hole in the drywall. Thank fuck I missed.

That didn’t stop me.

I got really bad alcohol poisoning on a snow day during our grade 10 exams. My girlfriend’s mom was at work and we got into her cheap vodka and did clock shots. One shot every 5 minutes. We were 15 and didn’t know any better. Started at 11. By quarter after we were wasted but it hadn’t hit yet so we kept going.

I have flashes of recollection wherein we decided walking downtown was a good idea. I feel like another, more sober friend or two had shown up to help, but I honestly have no idea.

I was told I knocked over a magazine rack in one store. They called the cops. We had gotten to the other end of the street by then and I was attempting to order food before the cops showed. We ran out the back door and I almost tumbled down a 150-foot embankment into a river. I vomited on the cop’s shoes and was put in the drunk tank. My dad had to leave work to pick me up. And the cop’s shoes were waiting in a plastic grocery bag for me to clean when I finally stopped feeling sick 3 days later.

That didn’t stop me either.

I dropped out of high school on and off from 15 years old til I was 18. I gave up on school and worried about working and paying rent. I had a good job. Worked in a restaurant. Loved it, made decent money and it was kinda like a dysfunctional family.

Cue the Christmas party.

I was bartending, fairly good at it. But then I started drinking. And then I almost threw up on my boss’s girlfriend.

Then I quit.

And I quit for a long time.

I didn’t have another drink until my 24^th summer.

I was in Montreal, at a fetish club and the owner’s girlfriend gave me Goldschlager on the rocks, just to sip. And I liked it. First drink I ‘d had since that Christmas party 5.5 years prior.

Amazing I held on as long as I did. I was a waitress at a strip club for a year prior, never drank. Started stripping, never drank, the boyfriend I had at the time was a raging alcoholic, didn’t drink with him. He actually got so drunk he shit the only pair of pants he brought to Montreal; they were leather too. That might have kept me from drinking now that I think about it.

Wait…

I did get insanely alcohol poisoning drunk one more time, with him, trying to keep up doing shots of Jager. I drank a bottle of the stuff. That was enough to keep me clean for a couple more years.

I never really started drinking until a few months after he and I broke up.

I was bad for a bit, then better, then bad again, then I quit dancing and drinking at the same time.

And so it went.

Couple years of a slow decline into stripping and drinking. Then cold turkey out of both, then back again.

I was never a social drinker. Just at work. And when I was settling into being single and living alone, I had a few whiskeys every now and again to take the edge off. But, I’d been living with a barely functioning alcoholic prior to that and after a year of drinking together after supper, it had become a habit. I see that now.

All habits can be broken.

I decided to try 30 days no meat, no alcohol the day I left for Florida last year. I had a tiny bit of both. But nothing to affect how much better I felt. Then I went back to Newfoundland and blacked out for the second to last time.

That should have been the end of it too.

But as it stands, I don’t know when my last drink was, and I don’t know what it was. And I don’t really care. I am just glad it’s over.

I have been actively trying to quit for over 2 years now.

I decided to stop trying and just do.

I know when my last cigarette was. I got semi peer pressured into having it and it tasted like death. Haven’t had another since. It was a Marlboro and I was looking out over the ocean after a really nice dinner with my roommate and the anarchist farmers.

And here I sit, almost 6 months later, at the end of the world. Full liquor cabinet downstairs, cartons and cartons of cigarettes and I don’t want them.

The day Wolf messaged me and said ‘okay, I quit drinking’ it was like this huge weight was lifted. And I decided to quit too.

It was the last nail in a coffin that had refused to stay shut and buried for 30 years.

And I wasn’t alone.

I am not trying to be mean or downplay the people affected by this, which is pretty much everyone at the moment.

It just occurred to me, after way too much time online, a lot of people don;t understand how a virus works. Like at all.

If you still insist on calling this the China virus. Don’t bother reading any further.
You are racist and dangerous.

Everybody else…

This virus is super new. I get that. New information is coming out all of the time. And we get it in real time. From varying sources. Some factual and data driven. Some semi factual and emotionally driven.

This is emotionally factual.

I am not a doctor.
I do have the ability to read and process information in a non-biased, non-reactionary way.
I question things. I fact check. I do my own research. I look for language clues in articles. I factor in variables.

I don’t expect others to do this, however, this is how I manage to stay calm.

Care to join me?

You want to keep being scared? I can’t stop you.

You want to keep re posting articles meant to scare you, just to scare other people?
Kinda mean and crazy but, okay I guess.

Seriously, why though.

Same psychological reason we prefer not to watch scary movies alone I suppose.
You could just turn the scary movie off, there’s that.
Besides, that would and possibly will be another article for another time.
Crisis Psychology 101, for Dummies

I am a bit angry at the media, a lot mad really.

Read 2 articles yesterday. Both reputable sources. I checked.

CAN MOSQUITOES CARRY COVID-19?
That was the attention-grabbing title. I saw 4 people repost it all freaking out.
I then opened the article and the answer is no.
So why not just say that in the first place?
Because you won’t click on it and in this day and age, a click is the same thing as buying a magazine or a newspaper, that is how they make money.

You are literally paying them to freak you out.

Can we please be done with the panic portion of the exercise now?

Stop reposting without reading the article. Look for words like ‘potentially, presumably, might possibly, maybe’ basically anything non-committal a fuck boy might say if you are asking if you are exclusive.

And my new nemesis.
REINFECTION. Everyone’s new favorite headline.

Open

The

Fucking

Article.

Read it. They use the word reinfection in the headline and switch to reactivation in the article.
There is no cure for COVID-19. Even a vaccine is not a cure. The difference between sick and well is viral load versus antibodies. How many foreign cells are present, are they active and replicating faster than your body can fight them off or inactive, not replicating or replicating at a manageable level.

Reactivation is different than reinfection. Reactivation means the minimum viral load necessary to register positive was not present at the time of one (OR 2) negative tests, and the virus multiplied again enough to register positive on yet another test.

The other reasonable explanation is human error. The negative wasn’t really a negative in the first place.
And buried in every REINFECTION article is a small disclaimer stating exactly both of the things I just said.

REINFECTION is sexy, scary, keeps us afraid.

And it isn’t really real.

Reactivation is common in viruses. Get a cold, feel like shit, feel a bit better then feel like shit again. Reinfection is rare and would mean that the person 100% for sure cleared the virus, went out and caught it again from someone else. That doesn’t really happen.

Chicken pox you get once (mostly), Norwalk viruses mutate, and you can catch them every few years.
My entire family had it this year, my immunity from having it 2 years ago prevented me from getting reinfected. See how that works? I had antibodies.

Antibodies from those infected from the SARS virus were still present 1 to 2 years after the initial infection. This is a good thing, means your body knows how to fight that particular thing. Same goes with flus and colds.

But this virus is new.
Hard data is rare, speculation is rampant. This is all theoretical.

There are two strains, and they are too close to each other to risk a true reinfection.
The antibodies produced from fighting strain L are good enough to fight strain S also.

Let me break it down.

Our bodies are exposed to viruses and bacteria all day long.
We do NOT get a lot of them for 3 reasons.
1. We survived a similar infection and our defense system created antibodies. Lil soldier cells that attack and kill virus cells on contact.
2. We have been exposed to small enough doses of a virus or similar virus that, over time, our lil soldier dudes already trained how to kill said virus. This is also a very base explanation for how vaccines work.
3. Our natural immune system, the one we were born with, came equipped with the soldiers to fight said virus.

This is why cousins should not have children. Our natural immune system is a double, combination of immunities from each parent, which are combinations of their parents etc… too close in the gene pool = sickly kids.

Your mom is immune to x y z, your dad is immune to a b x
You are immune to a b X y z

Alternately, when we travel really far from home, sometimes we need vaccines. Our bodies are not equipped to deal with certain viruses that are common in other countries. Bad, but easy example. Don’t drink the water in Mexico, everyone knows this right? Travelers Diarrhea, key word traveler. People who live in Mexico don’t run around shitting their pants all day every day. They have a natural immunity to the microorganisms that cause this, and/or a tolerance built up over time. Travelers do not.

So what about COVID-19. Its new. The presumption can be made no one is immune. Not so at all.
No virus is 100% infectious.
The cruise ships were for all intents and purposes, closed control groups.
100% exposure and rigorous testing for both the virus and antibodies after the fact.
Less than 1/3 tested positive for the virus AND antibodies.
People were directly exposed to the virus and did not catch it.
Let that sink in.

The options with this particular virus (any virus really) are as follows.

1. Exposure without infection
2. Exposure with infection but no symptoms
3. Exposure with infection and mild symptoms
4. Infection leading to severe symptoms

Some people are naturally immune, been exposed, did not get it at all, no way to count that number really.
Some people carry the virus and do not get sick, which seems to be a higher number than previously understood, means you have antibodies, also means you can transmit the virus to others until the viral load decreases*. Some people get sick and recover, which means you have antibodies.
Some people get sick and their bodies cannot produce antibodies fast enough to keep the viral load in check and the virus takes over which leaves the body susceptible to pneumonia and other issues and you don’t make it.

*This is what makes this particular virus both scary and not scary.
Usually you feel sick and are contagious on a short timeline.
This hangs out in your body, replicating for up to 14 days without you feeling sick at all. = Scary
You probably already had it or came in contact with it and did not get sick = less scary

I would love to have a handy dandy little graph to show you what percentage of who is what, but I don’t. No one does.

As it stands today, there are 7.7 billion people in the world. Most of them fall into category 1 or 2. Like really mostly. Up to 40% are 2.

If you scroll down on worldometers.com they split the numbers into active and resolved, then again into mild and critical. Today Italy had 100 000 active cases, all but 3000 are mild. 30 000 recovered.

It takes substantially longer to get a diagnosis of negative than to be registered as a positive. How many people are going to go running to the already overwhelmed hospitals if they are simply feeling better, finally.

In my opinion, just using logic, a vast portion of the population of earth, especially in urban areas have already been exposed to the virus. If you left your house in March and went anywhere other people were, you probably got micro-dosed at the least or fully exposed.

But this idea makes it less scary doesn’t it. So would mass antibody testing so people can stop being afraid of hypotheticals

As does looking at the number of tests processed versus positive tests.

• USA has held steadily at 4/5 tests being negative.
• Canada is 3 out of 4 are negative. A negative can easily turn into a positive yes, which is why we need antibody testing badly.
• But, the reason for bringing this up is it is easier to get a COVID-19 test in both of those countries if you can prove direct contact with a positive case or are presenting symptoms. Not easy by any stretch, just easier.

This is all based on my research and my perspective. I am totally fine being wrong or changing my mind when new information presents itself.

I wish everyone else would.

It is time to stop panicking and start being practical.

Stay home, stay safe.

Wolf had a good idea for the book series.
Prolonging life by the consumption of pain. Obligate mutualism. We feed and heal each other. Closed circle.

Vibes well with my theme, acceptance of the other in their purest forms begets self-acceptance and happily ever after.

He is my monster eater.

Every bit of damage that has been done to me; he undoes. With his words or his hands, just by being himself really.

The first night we met, I felt myself expanding into who I used to be, better even. I felt what I could be in how he saw me that night.
It’s still that way. Standing next to him I am at my most brave and beautiful self. Under him I am a bit of a mess, but he likes me that way, and so do I. Princess Panda Eyes is part of who I am.

It is beyond liberating, to be cherished and understood as I am. To have someone peel back all the constrictive layers of other people’s opinions of me.

So shed your skin and let’s get started (Hunters and Collectors)

That’s what it feels like. Sloughing off the old and making room for the new.

One corrupt file at a time.

Those that came before either had no idea what they were dealing with in me, or worse, knew what they had, tried to stifle it, bring me down to their level so they could own me. But, eventually they all ran anyways. Leaving me feeling like I was too much or not enough and never being able to reconcile this.

I am enough.

He stays.

That is huge to me. He is unwavering, even when I am running around like Chicken Little thinking the sky is falling. All he has to say is “It was just a bad day baby, it’s alright now.” And I can breathe.

He’s not wrong.

He doesn’t hold grudges; I get to exist without consequences for what I am. I just get to be myself, whatever that happens to be. I get to evolve. I am encouraged to do so. He protects me, even from myself.

I was sitting on the floor in the airport trying to get my boots back on, my dress was riding up, but I was rushing and didn’t notice. He stood in front of me and when I finally stood up, flustered, he said he noticed and was standing in place, protecting what was his. This.
I did something silly, he protected me.
I also felt safe enough to wear ‘that’ dress out in public, because he was with me. That in itself, is a big deal.

This is where the Dom/sub dynamic leaves the bedroom and presents in real life.

I chose (very early on) to defer to him, to trust him completely. He can (and does) overpower me physically without exerting much effort at all. He’s a really big fucker and very skilled in varying fighting disciplines. (I may or not be quivering a bit thinking about this)

I’ve seen examples of what he is capable of, untethered, and it is a lot.

I am not afraid. Quite the opposite, I feel safe in a way I’ve only briefly experienced before. Now it just is.

Our sexual tastes and kinks are perfectly compatible. Our bodies are too.

But there is more to it than that.

He is both my monster, and he fights the monsters.

He has his demons too. We all do, anyone worth knowing does anyways.

I am a demon tamer.

How does one tame a demon?
You can’t.  
I don’t really, tame isn’t the right word, that implies ownership and forced subservience.
I soothe.
Broken horses still run, but only because we make them. It’s not the same.
Just like you can’t really keep a wolf as a pet. I mean you can, but something in them will always remain wild. And to me, that is the part worth saving and nurturing. Beasts don’t belong in cages. Once he’s out, it will be his own free will that decides where he wants to go, and whether he wants to stay with me. Roam if you want to. I’m here.

Absolute acceptance for what someone else is at their core. Love for all the dark things they kept hidden and unconditional understanding, ‘of course you feel that way.’ And figuring out the reasons why. Learning who someone really is behind the masks we have to wear. When those masks come off, he is glorious.

That trust is everything.

We are physical manifestations of safe spaces for each other. Everything he ever wanted to do is everything I want done to me, I encourage him to be himself, take everything he has to give and ask for more, please more.
Everything I was afraid to be is what he wants for me, he encourages me, even to the point of designing the cover for the smol book and pushing every limit I have put on myself.

We benefit from the other healing, learning, evolving.

He said today that we have practice being apart, that we will be okay.

I know we will be.

Like an unsung melody
The truth is waiting there for you to find it
It’s not a blight, but a remedy
A clear reminder of how it began
Deep inside your memory
Turned away as you struggled to find it
You heard the call as you walked away
A voice of calm from within the silence
And for what seemed an eternity
You’re waiting, hoping it would call out again
You heard the shadow reckoning
Then your fears seemed to keep you blinded
You held your guard as you walked away

When you think all is forsaken
Listen to me now (all is not forsaken)
You need never feel broken again
Sometimes darkness can show you the light

Disturbed, The Light

I would like to attempt to be the voice of reason here.

I am not a doctor, nor a politician, nor any kind of expert. I am a rational, intelligent human being who is currently self isolating as to not exacerbate the problem.

I lived through the East Coast Blackout in August of 2003, 8 days without power. We were one of the last neighbourhoods to have power restored because I lived in an industrial area. This feels like that, without the camaraderie and with too much information.

I was a server during SARS in Toronto and I watched us service industry people all suffer and starve because no one came to the city that year. I have also seen the false information about the concert at Downsview park later that year. Our city was suffering massive economic ramifications over a very small outbreak. The Rolling Stones put on a huge concert months after the fact. It did NOT cause the outbreak, Keith Richards saved us.

My normal writing style has a lot of sarcasm and dry humor, I am trying to quell it now, bear with me.

I also was alive, in my 20’s, during 9/11.

I saw something today that made absolute sense to me, so I will share it now.

This feels like 9/11 every day.

Pretty astute. This looming fear, the uncertainty, what is next, countries going on lockdown.

I both realize and emphasize it is not the same. But the global fear is palpable. Like a low-grade panic attack that won’t let go rather than one big episode then a slow return to normalcy.

Things changed after 9/11 and they will definitely change again after this.

As someone who suffers from anxiety, and has a horse in this race, also as a page runner on social media and a blogger with a fairly high hit count, I feel like I have a responsibility to myself and others to remain calm.

I only read articles from reputable sources. I am vigilant in my fact checking.

I have come to some conclusions based on what I have read and what I have experienced.

There seems to be a growing desire among a fair percentage of people to ‘just get this, get sick, quarantine and get it over with.’ Or alternately, with the same sentiment in mind ‘let the government shut everything down, quarantine and get this over with.’

This is my mindset as well. Nothing would bring me more comfort than having a piece of paper that stated ‘recovered’ and have the border reopened.

There is no cure, there is recovery only. Recovery means your body fought off the virus and won. Is it immunity forever? Looks like no. More like the herpes virus but less serious, wherein you can contract COVID 19 a second time, but its rare.

Worth noting it is estimated that 80-90% of the population carry the herpes virus, whereas a fraction of the carriers exhibits symptoms or outbreaks.

I said last week, people are going to get tired of panicking, its exhausting.

I don’t think that is what the media wants.

I am not a conspiracy theorist by any stretch of the imagination. But, on my 3 social media platforms, plus ‘recommended links’ every time I’ve opened Google over a 14 day period, I’ve found 2 articles containing good news. 2 out of an estimated 400 I have been subjected to just from regular scrolling.

I Googled “is Italy testing for COVID 19 among the deceased?” 8+ horrible headlines before I found any reputable, real information, and my question is still unanswered. But it’s a good article. Factual, calming. Here, read it.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/16/opinions/south-korea-italy-coronavirus-survivability-sepkowitz/index.html

My train of thought was as follows. It is now widely known that Africa as a collective, at the height of the AIDS epidemic*, was unable to test the deceased for HIV or AIDS. Of course not, those tests are better used on the living. However, a massive anomaly with the actual numbers was finally noted. Anyone who died of any illness associated with HIV was enumerated as AIDS related ______ (fill in the blank).  Most notably pneumonia.

Non infected individuals also get pneumonia.

See where I am going here?

COVID 19 hit during flu season.

Are the death tolls and infection rates accurate? Can they possibly be?

Unlikely. It’s a scientific improbability.

China is another conundrum in and of itself. We are basing a lot of information on numbers and actions coming from China. China is a communist country with a government-controlled media. Culturally speaking, China is also known for ‘saving face’. It is just ingrained in their culture. Zero judgement on my part. I am merely suggesting that maybe the government wouldn’t put a whole country under quarantine over 253 reported cases on January 21^st 2020. Which is what happened.
The numbers are likely skewed.
For example In 2008 the magnitude 7.9 2008 Sichuan earthquake killed 87,587 people. (source, Wikipedia)  It was originally reported, well after the fact that the death toll from said earthquake was 600-800 people. This was later revealed to be untrue and in reality the numbers were downplayed 100x.

Again, no conspiracy here, just a logical conclusion based on a relatable event.

I lived in Newfoundland for 2 years. I left November 21^st 2019 as the first case of COVID 19 was being diagnosed in Wuhan.

Since then I have traveled extensively through the United States. I have crossed paths with at least 3 known diagnosed individuals at 2 different airports, same time, same airline, different flights. I have been to a massive music festival just as the states was starting to report hot spots. I have traveled in those cities, through those airports, most recently a week ago, hence self isolation, even though my symptoms are limited to what I know is my body fighting off an illness. i.e. mildly swollen glands and I am tired.

So fucking tired, mostly due to stress and canceling all of my future travel plans one by one without knowing when I will see my boyfriend again, when I will be allowed to return to work, will the government help me, an independent contractor? I have less unknowns and fears than a lot of people I know. I am safe, I have food and shelter. And here’s the kicker (and the reason for this article).

I know, beyond all doubt, I have been exposed to this virus already. It is an infinitesimally small chance that I haven’t been. Sure, you can say ‘well you traveled a lot.’ Yes, I did. And before last week, I went about my daily life just like everyone else, coming into contact with probably less than your average number of people because I am an introvert, but still. All infection models say the average infected person with infect 2.5 more people, who will go on to infect 2.5 more people, so by me going out 1+2.5+2.5+2.5= 8.5 people off the hop in one day of running to the post office. Which I did. Among other things, i.e. I was on a plane, 4 planes actually, 6 in the last 3 weeks at 3 different airports a total of 6 times.

The math on this is both terrifying and comforting.

Can you see why?

My stance is that probably 90% of the urban population has been exposed if not infected. The curve will flatten sooner than later due to the fact that we have all already been exposed or infected. The numbers will spike when more tests become available, but that is unavoidable,

I read a Twitter thread from a 22-year-old girl in NYC who had been clubbing, a lot, 2 weeks ago. 10 days ago, she started feeling shitty, demanded she be tested even though they didn’t want to. Went through the symptoms, self isolated and yep, she was positive. Imagine how many other people she came in contact with before feeling shitty. The extrovert principle.

I have another friend who travels for work, was on an infected flight, in one of the ‘at risk’ rows. She tested negative.

Another friend went to the hospital 2 days ago in St. John’s Newfoundland, a thriving port town, with exact COVID 19 symptoms and was denied a test and sent home. As of the reports yesterday NFLD had tested 618 people, 1 positive, 2 presumptive. But I know another girl in St. John’s, full symptoms, recovered, never tested.

So, what does all of this mean?

Personally, I think I somehow managed to micro-dose myself with this virus and time will tell, but I think my body is fighting it off rather efficiently. Or, I have been directly exposed and again, I am fine.

I think the numbers are all wrong. Unless we test the entire world including the recently deceased, which is impossible, the numbers will never be accurate.
But if people are fighting to be tested and turned away…how many people really have it?

I would like the media to be more responsible reporting numbers.

I refuse to look at counts unless issued by the World Health Organization daily status reports https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports

Or this one https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

worldometers now has a column for # of tests administered and we can do the math on the # of those who test negative.
But that doesn’t make headlines does it.

This is feeling like the end of the world, with a lot of uncertainty.

But, if I am right, it doesn’t have to be.

Stay safe, quarantine if possible, demand to be tested.

Let’s get this over with and get back to our new normal.

*lesser known scientific fact that emerged from Africa during the AIDS epidemic. A large number of prostitutes had developed a natural immunity to HIV from repeated low dose exposure to the virus.

The Secret of HIV Immunity Among Kenyan Sex Workers

24 days later and I still haven’t adjusted to not everyone knowing what I am doing at all times.

I miss my Facebook fam. I miss my page and my people.

To be clear, I don’t miss Facebook itself. It is panic city misinformationland over there. Who knew Twitter was the rational older brother of social media…

I talk to a couple people on Instagram, met a few new tribesmen on Twitter. But it isn’t the same.

Funny enough, my Facebook memories were stocked with good omens and sage advice from past me.
I stayed off social media, mostly, til noon. I had an alarm for that.

I am on day one of self-improvement Sarah instead of just wallowing.

80% achievement unlocked. Not bad for one day.

Got up 90 minutes after my alarm, but 8:45 is better than noon, and I was having a really good dream.
Took my vitamins. 2L of water ingested so far. Bed made, laundry in the dryer. One article down and this one in progress. Checked on the Hulk, Halo and Sara. Did storytime and NSFW emails to Wolf.

I had a mid-day Pornhub hiatus to reward myself. Now I need a shower and to tackle one project. There’s a list.

So, Wolf and my 500+ Twitter followers know I did something really stupid Tuesday.

Back up a sec…I had a dancing contract at a small town strip club for a week, set up months ago. Was kinda dreading it after the last bar I worked at. My dread was unfounded, I kinda loved it. Made more the first night than I did in 3 weeks at the other place I had been forcing myself to go to.

That was Monday night, I almost didn’t go because, well pandemic. And because every fiber of my being is over dancing really. I belong to my Wolf Dom and other people looking at me sexually is abhorrent. But money and surviving are a need. I went.

I didn’t hate it. It was super chill, squeaky clean and easy.

We sat in limbo Monday night waiting for announcements from our provincial government about non-essential service shutdowns. It wasn’t IF the bar was going to close, it was when.

‘When’ happened to be Tuesday morning.

I messaged the girl I was traveling with around 11am, sent her the article I had read. She forwarded it to the boss and the dominos cascaded.

Our ride was 2+ hours away. I did a coffee run, threw on Brooklyn 99 and packed slowly.

Here is the dumb part.

I had barely unpacked. We knew we weren’t staying before we even got there. All my clothes save what I had worn, were in my suitcase. All my make up and toiletries were still in their respective bags.

What I did do…was put my sex toys in the nightstand drawer. Like a fool.
Am I fucking new?
I KNOW myself, I get distracted too easily when stressed. I always double check. But this time I didn’t.
I even remember thinking it was a bad idea while I was doing it and I remember thinking that morning “don’t forget those” but then my phone dinged, and I got distracted.

Cut to 6 hours later, finally home. Very forlorn, avoiding unpacking like the plague because of the plague, sitting on my unmade bed in my sweaty sweats scrolling through porn gifs on Twitter thinking to myself ‘Self, a serotonin boost would be a really good idea right about now wouldn’t it?’

And then it hit me…

My sex toys were 2.5 hours away in a cathouse, in a locked room above a locked bar.

I’ve never moved so fast in my life. I was downstairs begging for the jeep keys while still on the phone with the sex shop a few blocks away.

I panic bought the whole store.

Mild exaggeration, but I did spend a bit more in under 10 minutes at the Love Shop than I made the night before.

Worth it.

I can give up a lot of things. Masturbating is not one of them.

When I stocked up on vape stuff, I got the lower level of nicotine thinking this would be a good time to quit or at least wean myself off.

I imbibed 2 ounces of meat and 2 ounces of alcohol from November 21^st til December 26^th 2019.

I’ve been drunk 5 times in 5 months as opposed to 5 times a week.

But this?

No, I cannot, I will not.

The interaction at the store was hilarious. Both of us reassuring the other about washed hands and bleached countertops while keeping physical distance. She said she’d done the same thing a few years back, left her toys behind in a nightstand in a hotel out west. I felt slightly better, and new toys had been on my wish list for a while. I cringed replacing my Tracy’s Dog, but at this point it factors in on the same list as sleep, food, water and shelter.

I got home with my bag of precious and promptly sent Wolf the first remotely happy series of videos since I left for the airport. Showing him all of the treasures I had amassed.

There was a turning point there.

We went back to being our dirty, flirty selves and I didn’t realize how badly I needed our normal and how much I missed my Tango wand.

I don’t know who needs to hear this but get in the fucking shower, get out of the clothes you have been in for days, eat a vegetable, clean your closet. Please.

Make your bed, change your pants, wipe that shit off the counter.

It’s me, I needed to hear this. I need to do this.

My way of life has now become a government recommendation and I am sliding into the pit of stench and sloth. Because I am now allowed. Not exactly why, but still. I found myself on a scary precipice.

I pulled myself out thankfully. That was not okay.

Day one of correcting my sleep cycle.

I was thinking about the Hulk yesterday.

The man and the ride.

The man…well, he goes dark like I do. He messaged me asking where I was, if I was safe and how the social distancing is going. The last part was a bit of a joke. Quarantine is the word for how we live. Only go out of necessary, avoid large crowds etc. We are checking on our introvert friends too. It’s too easy to depression sleep for the foreseeable future.

We made a pact to check in. I used to remind him to take his vitamins, it’s time again.

We split 5 years ago yesterday and I still checked on him. Less and less over the years. But still. Love doesn’t stop, it just changes, or it was never love.

Hulk the ride? Hulk is bae. Fuck I wish I would have ridden it when I was down last time. I was just so tired from 2 days at Disney and I needed to go back to the condo and recharge. My spoons were gone, and I couldn’t people anymore.

Now I am scared I won’t get another chance.

I have panic issues. They were at their peak when I was married. The sky was always falling, and I was living in a state of walking on eggshells for years. I have learned to deal and create rational thought processes, also to say things out loud if they feel…weird and unpleasant. It helps.

But with so many thoughts, feelings, facts, false information flying around, everything seems within the realms of possibility doesn’t it?

I know I will go to Disney again. It’s just weird that its closed for the first time since 9/11.

They closed the US Canada border yesterday too, the world is pretty much shut for now.

The scary issue is, we don’t know until when.

When will the other shoe drop?

We keep waiting for the spike, the climax, but when I did my last grocery run today, everything seemed quiet but semi-normal. The bigger retail chains were closed, but there were people just wandering around, lottery kiosk open, As Seen on TV store, open. Didn’t make sense to me.

But nothing really does.

I have a horrible confession to make.

I flew home Friday night. I stayed in the same clothes I flew in, no shower, until Monday morning.

I was pretty fucking ripe. Totally grossed myself out. But I couldn’t move.

I had a long term, low grade panic episode with a massive black cloud of depression on top.

I was paralyzed.

I sat on my bed and stared at…

The wall

My phone

Pornhub

Netflix

And that’s it.

I knew I had to clean unpack and repack, but I didn’t. I took in exactly as many calories as I needed to continue existing, but that was all.

I started today the same way, filthy. But with a twist, cleaning lady came to fix downstairs and I decided to finally clean my room and get my shit together.

I hadn’t unpacked since my last Wolf trip. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to. A 15-minute task took 4 hours because I kept checking my phone for an hour every 5 minutes. There was a finality to it that I wasn’t ready to process. I am the girl who has only been in one place for more than 11 days at a time since November 21^st 2019, same day as the first reported case of COVID-19 oddly enough.

It was hard to unpack with no idea when I am going to repack. It hurt me and scared me.

Things are going to be painful and hard and scary and we have to do them anyways.

To all the people raging against staying home. Stop. At some point you are going to have to face what alone feels like and it is not as bad as you think it is.

It’s now 9:34am the next day. Downstairs is decontaminated. The last of the groceries bought, responsibly, I will actually go through 7 tubs of yogurt in 14 days. Bags unpacked. Laundry in the washer. I still haven’t showered since Monday (still, post first, shower second, I fucked up starting the washing machine). My brain is less dark, but now what?

One of the most heartbreaking movie scenes in my internal filing cabinet is in American Beauty.

Ricky Fitz’s dad hits him, and says he needs structure and discipline. Its not that part, its Ricky’s response. “Thank you for trying to teach me, don’t give up on me dad.”

I too need structure and discipline, or I will watch the same 3 shows, sleep, be dirty in the same clothes, jerk off and not eat for days on end.

It is not a part of my personality that I am proud of, but it’s part of me that needs to be negotiated with.

What better time than a government enforced quarantine? Takes 3 weeks to make or break a habit.

I am safe in my attic space. Yes, sadness is bound to creep in…but what about all those things I have been putting off doing, reading, writing, learning? Why not now? Theoretically, I can’t be sad if I am busy.

Wolf and I are separated, but why not do what our grandparents did and write to each other?

I asked him today if we could tell each other one story every day, something old, something new, a memory together, anything really. He said yes.

I’ve had a timer to drink water every hour for a month now. Why not limit my social media too? Set alarms to write, to shower, to eat.

Maybe finally learn how to apply eyeshadow, do Tai Chi, do my squats and eat my vegetables. Fix the bag of clothes that need mending, read some books, write some too.

This is not how any of us wanted things to be. But it is the way they are.

Check on your friends, introverts or extroverts, be smart, be safe and for fuck sakes have a shower.

We are NOT part of the victimized groups because WHITE PEOPLE ARE THE ONES DOING THE FUCKING VICTIMIZING.

Calling the cops because a family with a different skin color had the ‘audacity’ to have a barbecue.

It gets so much worse.

Sit down and check your privilege.

I am super white for the record. My background is English, Scottish, Irish and Polish.

Only way I could be whiter is if you threw some Nordic in there, little Swedish maybe. But alas. My ancestors were assholes. The English weren’t happy on their tiny grey island and went about wiping out everything and everyone and taking whatever the fuck they wanted. And a few hundred years after they came over to North America, wiped out the indigenous population, stole other people from other countries and brought them here as slaves so they didn’t have to do any physical labour themselves, that mentality is still prevalent. What the actual fuck.

We have science and the internet.

White supremacy or white supremacism is the racist belief that white people are superior to people of other races and therefore should be dominant over them. White supremacy has roots in the now-discredited doctrine of scientific racism and often relies on pseudoscientific arguments. Like most similar movements such as neo-Nazism, white supremacists typically oppose members of other races as well as Jews.

The term is also used to describe a political ideology that perpetuates and maintains the social, political, historical, or institutional domination by white people (as evidenced by historical and contemporary sociopolitical structures such as the Atlantic slave trade, Jim Crow laws in the United States, the set of “White Australia” policies from the 1890s until the mid-1970s, and apartheid in South Africa).^[1][2] Different forms of white supremacism put forth different conceptions of who is considered white, and different groups of white supremacists identify various racial and cultural groups as their primary enemy.^[3]

In academic usage, particularly in usage which draws on critical race theory or intersectionality, the term “white supremacy” can also refer to a political or socioeconomic system, in which white people enjoy a structural advantage (privilege) over other ethnic groups, on both a collective and individual level.

We fought wars over this shit and the good guys won.

How is this still a popular mindset?

I will quote Louis CK who is both white and also fucking sucks super bad.

“I love being white. Seriously, I really do. If you’re not white, your missing out. ‘Cuz this shit is thoroughly good. Let me clear this up by the way: I’m not saying white people are better. I’m saying that BEING white is clearly better. Who could even argue? If it was an option I would re-up every year! ‘Oh yeah, I’ll take white again. Absolutely.’ Here’s how great it is to be white: if I would have a time machine I could go to any time and it would be awesome when I get there. That is exclusively a white privilege! Black people can’t fuck with time machines.”
― Louis C.K.

This is not the quote I was looking for. And I hate quoting him at all after what he did to those women. But he is a prime example as to how our culture is geared towards mediocre white dudes. I bought into his shit for years, listening to what he was saying out loud in public, which was good, until he did the opposite in private.

The one I wanted is where we’d show up in a new country  and make everything into straight lines and right angles. Where we aren’t happy enough with how things are when landing in a foreign place, we murder, rape and imprison the indigenous population and start making everything more ‘white’.
I think he said white people must be aliens.

Kinda fucking feels like that doesn’t it?

Like the almost the entire world is built around the comfort and advancement of rich white men.

Because it fucking is.

Probably why we’re taught to hate the middle east so much. Can’t go over there with your limited melanin and strut around like the cock of the walk, now can you? Must hurt their fragile egos.

I’m on a 30-day Facebook ban. It’s a big one.

And the timing is terrible.

I had a back and forth going on a Bindi Irwin meme

This one

This is pure chaotic good. It is wholesome. “carry on with your activities, be safe, we love you.”

I told Wolf about it, he said, “What? That’s Australia’s princess.”

I caught flack for this. And I got my back up bad about it.

DO NOT SHIT ON THE BINDI IRWIN MEME.

Are you fucking kidding me?

I said ‘you cannot be racist against white people the world is literally built around our comfort. Pointing out something factual, we do dumb shit like where we wear venomous spiders as brooches is not racist.’

The meme is funny because it’s true.

Smh white people ARE stupid.

Florida man. Case and point.

There is a video floating around of a little white girl riding on the back of a big ass alligator.

We are so unafraid of dying in ways other people live in fear of every day that we look for ways to do it ourselves.

We jump out of perfectly good planes. Climb mountains for literally no good reason, and most recently…a white dude got so offended by a meme he put me in Facebook jail for 30 days the same week as my book launch.

You want to know what white privilege looks like?

I have been pulled over 5 times in 10 years of driving. I have never even gotten a ticket. Not for speeding, not for expired plates, not for not having proper insurance documents. NONE OF IT.

It looks like a 300+ comment thread on a video wherein a black man ripped a confederate flag off the back of a tractor trailer and 250+ people complained about it. I think that video got reported as well, hence the swift ban on the second.

Neither one of those things were “Hate speech”.

Hate is a neo nazi ramming his vehicle into a peaceful protest and killing a woman.

The confederate flag is blatantly racist. Just like Roy Moore riding on the back of a horse to the polls.
Segregation was alive and well until 1964, 56 years ago.

10 years before I was born.

And we still have a really long way to go.

I was in northern rural Georgia visiting 9 years ago, needed cigarettes bad and we just had to drive by 3 perfectly good gas stations because they were for ‘blacks’.

What the actual fuck?

It has only gotten worse under 45.

Now it’s okay to be openly racist again.

There is no such thing as reverse racism and I will tell you why.

As a woman, I get the slightest taste of it.

Walking down the street and being afraid, not because of the color of my skin, but because of what is between my legs. I, and every other woman on the planet has to follow certain rules to avoid harassment, and we still get harassed. Amie Harwick did everything right, restraining order, reported her ex’s behavior to the police and he killed her anyways.

Just like I have seen the video footage of 100 black men and women ‘complying’ and dying anyways because cops in the states seem to hunt black people for sport, and it is an abomination.

Support is necessary.

But ACTUAL support. As in asking what we can do to help. listening to the answesr given, then doing that very thing.

Just like #notallmen is maddening, so is ‘I don’t see color’.

It’s a cop out.

Everyone exists in their own reality.

My reality is that I am a white woman who sees massive amounts of prejudice and injustice every day, and while I see it and acknowledge it, and in here I am trying to do something about it, I still get to get up from my laptop, put some pants on and walk out into the world and be white and enjoy the inherent safety that comes along with my skin color.

I can sympathize to a degree, but I will never fully understand it and I know this.

I don’t have to live it to realize it’s wrong.