[Ansel] For a week, we couldn’t breathe comfortably without lying on our stomach. Tachy. Nausea, diarrhea, more fatigue. We had so much difficulty breathing. And the trigeminal neuralgia, and neuralgia all over our backs, too… In hindsight, we should have gone to the hospital, but Kia and Ant were adamant on waiting for the PCR, and staying home for as long as we could breathe. Since there’s not much a hospital can do for us except help us breathe with either supplemental oxygen or ventilation.
In the end, we went to the ID. Tachy… Dizzy… could barely move or stay upright, had difficulty breathing. God, it was an effort to even dress half-decently… No ambulance. “I don’t want to pay for all of this,” Ant said. I didn’t argue… A chest x-ray and a diagnosis of bronchitis, they didn’t bother swabbing us. Ant is… Well, she thought ahead. Text-to-speech app ready on her phone for us to communicate with the doctor. That’s… That’s the only good thing I can say. I’m proud of her.
We had to call Ant’s biological parents to bring her to the hospital. They said they were at home, asked if they could come by in 20 minutes. It takes only 2 minutes for them to get to the apartment from that house! What if she had died?! I would have… I would have been able to do nothing, and she would have…
My partner could have died… My partner could have, and… They would’ve been able to… Ant. No one would have cared. We’d… Her, alone… I can’t really… I can’t let this disappointment consume us. It’s too easy to be swallowed up by rage, as legitimate as it often is. They’re… They’re our enemies, I suppose. They don’t really care. They’re not family. I’m on her side, and they never have.
We can’t trust her parents anymore. That’s all we can do. Maybe one day she’ll die, and Simone won’t even tell them. I honestly…
Simone ordered a Nintendo switch and a digital copy of Animal Crossing as soon as the game came out. I can’t exactly say that I’m unhappy about this. We’ve all been playing… It has been a decent way for all of us to bond. But it’s also taken up a lot of our time. Whenever we get into something, we blitzkrieg it. Hyperfocus and hyperfixation. But AC is a long-term investment. We’ll have to temper our sessions and schedule them. I’m worried about our fitness, too. No access to bags since the gyms are still closed, no pool either, limited to dancing and bodyweight exercises.
We are going to gain a lot of fat if we’re not careful. Maybe we can go to the duck park after work. Hoping the cops won’t stop us.
[Yumeka] …It’s depressing, for sure, to know that we’re so alone. But I guess there’s nothing to it, nothing new, I mean. You know, whilst we were under quarantine, Ant’s father had her come to his home to do her brother’s taxes. Didn’t care that we were possibly infected, contaminating the house… He was just stressed over that teenager doing his taxes incorrectly since he’s claimed him as a dependent. That’s all. We thought it was a real emergency…
I know really know what a family is like, or what it’s supposed to be like. But […] everyone here has been very kind to me. I’m getting memories now… […] I have vivid memories of my hair. From when they were eleven.
They’ve changed so much. This political person now, who can’t really act… They’re my family, and I love them very much.
The Polish sabre wasters still haven’t gotten here. Delays in production due to the lockdown in Poland.
It’s hard working here. That ICU stay has trained us to perceive any far-off conversation at a nurse’s station to be calumny about us. [For being trans, gay, the age differences.] There’s a lot of residual trauma… Plus, it’s the same hospital! Maybe if we were somewhere else…