the tremendous pain and emotional exhaustion is one thing. tight, pulsing pain at the base of my skull; crying because half of a cherry tomato fell out of the toasted sandwich i was making for my partner; a curdling feeling in my plasma; not knowing if i’m upsetting people because my sense of their feelings has been cut off. those are, like, intense and present.

ever-surprising though is the complete and utter lack of ümph. like, do you ever… you know when you… it’s like inside you you have a match hanging, bobbing against a spinning disk of coarse sandpaper and at some point it bobs enough that the match lights…. like, you have an idea like “i’d like to make a cup of coffee” and you put it in layaway until you have a spark of energy and you grab that and jump up and go do. a small spike in your fluctuating will power that’s enough to ignite you. and your inertia is no longer such that you can’t start, but such that you keep going.

well that’s missing.

i have been, since 8am, trying to take my half a hormone (none yesterday) and make coffee and gashouse eggs. or even just any one of those things. but i can’t get up. i can’t actually move. and if i put things on layaway they never get picked up. i’m going to have to synthesise willpower from something else. maybe i can imagine that a large rodent has been dropped on me, or that the house is burning down. i think if the house was burning down i might still just lie here. maybe if i just,,, lean to the left and roll off the sofa onto the floor then the jolt will shake something loose

maybe i could order some coffee to be delivered, then hopefully my pathological desire to never be an inconvenience to anyone will mean i get up to get the coffee from the hallway so none of the neighbours have to be reminded that i exist

if only abe was awake asking for eggs, then i could use that as fuel. okay, i’m going to try again. i’ll close the laptop and i’ll synthesize willpower out of something. maybe if i throw my vape onto the laundry basket then eventually the power of nicotine addiction will overcome the frozen executive function

— chee (hi@chee.party) 2020-06-11