Time for another update, it feels like.  It's already been a week...

Perhaps one of the most disconcerting things about sheltering in place to me is the ease at which it seems to throw old habits off course.  When our lives are suddenly that much "smaller", it feels very easy to succumb to the fallacy that so many things don't matter anymore.  The whole "out of sight, out of mind" idea, I think.  I can't say for certain whether my blogging has been affected or not (well...okay, maybe not.  It is me, after all, I just keep coming back again and again and again and again, without fail), but it sure feels like it would be very easy for me to forget that it matters, to lose track of time, to just go on trying to live this bubble of a life without stopping to think about maintaining those things that were left behind.

Maybe blogging wasn't the best example, but I feel that my remote contact with others has definitely been affected.  It's difficult enough to keep interactions going when you =do= see people, but nowadays people are even further removed from you.  On the one hand, I guess you might reach out more, knowing that you kind of have to, since you can't see people in person.  But on the other hand, perhaps the lives of others seems that much more inconsequential.  It's not like you're going to see that person again anytime soon, so wouldn't that naturally make it feel like those interactions have a little less of an impact?  Or...perhaps that's not the reason, but really just that everyone is sort of in a strange state of half-hibernation.  Trying to adapt to a life that is the new normal, yet is not normal at the same time.  I'm lucky enough that my life before and after shelter-in-place measures is more the same than it is different, but I'm sure that is not the case for many people.

But perhaps not much =really= changed at all, in the end.  When I think about people being isolated out of necessity, I can't help but wonder how connected we really were to one another before all this.  Certainly, the social dynamics were of a different flavor, but was it not the case that people were always, already in their own bubble, each running their own lives, stopping very briefly to notice one another, but never truly connecting?  The ways that we interact with each other in social lives...did we ever truly let each other in?  Or was that space simply reserved for that of a significant other, and of a family, because that is what society teaches us?  From my experiences, I cannot help but think that the isolation we currently face is any different than the isolation I faced for most of my life.  But of course I also know that my experience is not the same as everyone else, and that I am perhaps a special case (as everyone is), being not only extremely introverted but perhaps choosing not to buy into the system, the social system, as it were.

But I will say this, that when I think about the social isolation that we (hopefully, all?) are undertaking for the greater good, my mind does not, and cannot, think to itself, "I miss the days when...".  Because instead my only thought is sadness, sadness for the fact that it really doesn't feel all that different.  I'll never see Kiki again, quarantine or no quarantine, so what does it matter?  Those people who I am able to see in my day to day life, do you really think that they are the ones that are most important to me?  I already said before, that there are many of my current friendships that I would gladly trade, to be able to connect with those that were once in my life.  But I also know that this wish is not shared.  And perhaps it is a foolish wish, too, because back then, I was naive and did not realize just how few people truly cared.  How few people are willing to see things through, how few people understand what it means to stay connected, how few people cared about looking backwards to what came before.

I have met oh so scant few people like that in my life.  But after Kiki, I learned to see it.  I could tell, which people would leave, and which people would stay.  And it didn't have anything to do with what they said, or promised, but how they chose to live.  I had already put my faith in Kiki.  I had tied my string to her, and I could not simply "choose to move on".  If I could, I wouldn't be the kind of person still writing in this blog.  I wouldn't be the kind of person who still think back to those people, and wonder why they don't care about me when I care about them.  I watch as you interact casually with people who I am sure are more important to you than I am despite not caring nearly as much about you.  And I am hurt.  But this a price I must pay, because I have no choice.  I did not know, when I bound myself to you, that you would forever leave, taking a part of myself with you, never to return it.

It took me so long, to understand how you could leave.  But now I understand.  It wasn't that you were any different than anyone else.  Because everyone else is the same, too.  I know this, because I met another version of you.  Just this past year, in fact, I met another, and I felt my heart flowing with these emotions, because it felt like I had found you again, even though it was not you.  But my heart also knew, that this person would leave.  It was inevitable.  I could speak of it as if it were destiny.  I knew they would be gone.

And now, they are.

I didn't intend to write about Kiki today, but here we are.  I probably wrote a lot of things that aren't clear to you, but hopefully you might understand a little better why when I think about quarantine isolation it makes me sad, not because I feel that I am missing out on connecting with others, but because it simply reminds me of all the people who are already long gone.  And it pains me deeply.  A pain for which living is simply a means of coping.

So when you see me, blogging, as I have been for the last 15.88 years, know that it is not simply because I am "good" at staying constant.  It is because I have no other choice.  If I could move on, like all of you moved on, from xanga, to livejournal, to myspace, to facebook, and from cds, to ipods, to pandora, to youtube, to spotify, and from icq, to aim, to gchat, to messenger, to slack, to discord, I would have.  But despite all of the pain that it brings me, to stay here while almost every single person I cared about moved on, I know that to leave is to give up on life itself.

And there are those who stay.  Those who understand that connection is not a fickle thing, and who understand the importance of memory.  Those who understand what I mean when I say that to choose closure would be more painful.  Those who share my tears when I weep for the change that sweeps us all away from what we once were.  And having found these people, I know that I am not truly alone in this world.  It was even my blog itself, 8 years ago, that brought one of these people into my life, as I talked about how so many people didn't keep promises, and about how it was so frustrating, that people treated connections with such indifference, not holding themselves to a standard.  It took me a long time to find the people that truly believed in the same things, but I did.

I was initially going to write about some more mundane things too, but I feel like this post is well enough without that.