Jemiah Jefferson
Mostly confined to home environs for more than nine weeks. It’s not as
bad as it might be because I enjoy rest, solitude, and streaming
services, and I’ve gotten a lot of food delivery, and I’ve been
working full-time from home since March. It’s just not that different
from the way my life has been for a while, being either too broke to
do anything, or simply too tired. Multiple Sclerosis strips me of my
energy very effectively, and I rarely have even wanted to do more than
go home and go to bed for years now. Still, though, I miss my friends
terribly. Almost none of them have come for a visit, and I haven’t
felt it responsible to take the bus for an hour just to stay outdoors,
especially when it’s been raining so much! My life before was a lonely
one, completely devoid of romantic entanglements or even interest, but
at least I had a bunch of friends, a good relationship with most of my
co-workers, and was a happy regular at many small business
establishments. These days, I mostly only see my neighbors, and some
of them are very difficult, troubled people, so I’ve had to do a lot
of exhausting interpersonal gymnastics just to have anything like a
stable interaction. I am grateful as hell for the people around me who
are not in huge crises of mental health.
Mostly, I’m just very tired, as usual, and my creative drive, so long
suppressed for lack of time, hasn’t come back in nearly the way I
would have hoped. I am trying to write every day, and at best I can
wrestle a few words into shape, but nothing like the level of
productivity I would have expected.
And of course I am terribly worried – beyond my own capacity to even
examine. I’m just trying to keep an even keel, and stay the course,
and get up and get dressed every day, with a bra, even, and enjoy the
magic of the natural world that is in the back yard, since that’s
about as far as I get most days. I am so grateful to live in this city
with its incredible natural beauty, and that the weather has been
generally excellent by my standards. I’ve been sleeping great, except
for the rare nights when I can’t get to sleep at all.
“What’s to become of our world? Who knows what to do?” – The Police,
“Driven to Tears”