Saturday, Mar. 28, 2020 - 7:58 pm.
The city is officially on lockdown beginning tonight, in a few hours. This is the city with the highest number of people with the virus in the country, so no one is allowed to enter it of exit it.
Thankfully, we have pretty much everything we need at home for the next few days. Then we'll get a safe-conduct online to go to the supermarket, though I'm not sure if you need to get it for such an errand. Not everyone has easy access to internet, too. And, Jesus Christ, who'll feed the stray dogs and cats? And there's a homeless man who sleeps in the gas station in front of my building, who'll take him in?
Myself, I've been doing pretty well. Except I broke down yesterday. I don't mind being inside, I was just desperate because of all the things happening outside, and just in sheer anguish by how people are getting locked up, or losing their jobs or their income, or dying. My home country is ruled by a narcissistic, pseudo-charming dictator who has no idea how to handle this crisis and has fully militarized the country. Then, a filipino friend of ours that we met in the UK lost her father to the virus this week, he was a diplomar living in Paris.
Yesterday when I woke up I realized I had been waking up in the middle of the night for the past few days. Worse, I woke up horryfied because I was touching my face, I actually woke myself up yelling in my head DON'T TOUCH YOUR FACE.
As the day went by, I grew restless by unfinished tasks and unpublished works of mine, especially a column I'd written about how authoritarianism is making the pandemic worse in my country. I also emailed a researcher asking for a paper of hers I needed to correct a paper from my thesis, and I sent her the message by mistake while it was half-composed. That's when I started crying. I was deeply embarrassed, but also overwhelmed by everything.
Things started to look up in the afternoon. The researcher replied quickly, she was very gracious and sent me her paper. Then I heard from my editor for the column, she let me know it'd be published later on. My editor, BY THE WAY, is being held by the government in a shelter, along with other thousand people, because they were traveling when the pandemic scare hit our country. They're not getting tested, but are being kept far away from everything for 30 days, and are only allowed to be out of their rooms for one hour a day. Evil. The president of my country may seem fine, sometimes like a joke, but truly he's just evil and dangerous.
ANYWAY. My editor is still working from the shelter, so she published my column yesterday, and I felt lighter. I partly wrote it with her in mind, her situation is not even the worst possible, but I worry it'll be damaging in the long run. I wrote that column to try to defend my country from its own government. It won't do shit, it isn't even being widely read (we're established I'm not very popular), but just knowing it has the potential to reach out to others in solidarity helps me.
Yesterday I also published a Simeon comic strip with a vibrator storyline, but that's just my happy place <3
I have yet to move forward with publishing my book. I need to make a payment to the publisher in Spain, and I have a friend of Andrew's helping me with that, but everything is slower these days, if they move at all. The person I'm talking to from the publishing house poured her heart out about the pandemic in Spain, it's terrible. It may feel stupid to carry on with the book now, but I think it's a nice story and by the time it comes out, it might serve as a comforting thing to focus on in that uncertain world that awaits us.
I can't really get much work done during the week, I have a hard time concentrating for long. Still, I'm trying to work and have a sense of normalcy, or at least a routine. I, personally, am fine. I'm talking to friends and family often. I've managed to talk on the phone, or have a video phone, with with three out of four of my siblings, in a single week!
The remaining sibling, though, Brother #2, a medical doctor, just wrote to our family chat saying he intubated a possible coronavirus case. Jesus Christ, I hope he remains safe and healthy. I have to talk to him.
I feel like my writing is all over the place. It may also be because I'm sitting next to Andrew as he watches other nerds play online. It's a bit noisy, but it's nice being next to him, even if each of us are doing our own thing.