“I wondered which was harder, in the end. The act of telling, or who you told it to. Or maybe if, when you finally got it out, the story was really all that mattered.” ― Sarah Dessen, Just Listen

 I can see by the dates that it's going on three and a half years since I've written here, and gee.. I can't think of any good reasons why. 

Lies. Monstrous Lies.

I mean, I originally stopped writing because nobody reads blogs anymore, right? Once our feedreaders were winked out of existence, I suddenly lost all these other people I was connected to, and I didn't know how to deal with that again, so I just... didn't. 

I figured I'd keep writing if I felt like it; Stop if I didn't.  Didn't really matter if anyone was reading or not.  And for the most part, that's true.  I think that's still true anyways.  I can... feel around the edges of where I am now, back to the "normalcy" of summer 2019, and see that I was just going to do as I felt, knowing full well that it would likely not be read by many people, and I'd be okay with that. 

Because I am a writer, and writers write, regardless of if people are reading that writing or not. 

But then the world decided to implode quite a bit, and well: things changed. 

I got Covid. I nearly died. I have Long Covid still.  

I watched as the world talked a lot about how it didn't really matter if people were dying because they were old, or sick, or somehow just already unimportant. As the numbers climbed and my country, my world, just... attempted to pretend its way out of a global pandemic.  That's killed nearly six million people already, and is still in full swing (as most of the world pretends it's either over or almost over). 

And it turns out? under those conditions? I do not need anonymity.  

See I started this here website as a place to say the things I needed to say, anonymously (super anonymously at first) about my life, my world, the people in it, my feelings, etc. Without having to be too careful of people's feelings, or without having to censor myself and not writing about the things I needed to write about.  Because I knew I would worry people, or hurt people's feelings, or just be too harsh on bad days, or whatever.  

And that's worked for me, here for a very long time: This blog was established in 2005, and that's seventeen years ago, friends.  SEVEN TEEN YEARS.

And we've talked about a lot of things. Things I've never said to anyone else, or even allowed past my brain, ever. Private, personal, global, hilarious, hideous, sad, depressing, wonderful things. 

But I don't need to hide anymore, because I got Covid, I nearly died, and half of my country - and a fair share of people in my real life - just didn't give a shit.  Didn't act like they cared - complaining about masks and freedoms and vaccines and conspiracy theories.  

And in summer of 2020, I wrote my fucking will (I don't have a lot of things, but there were a few I wanted sorted); I wrote letters to my family; and then I started posting my real, actual, uncensored thoughts on Facebook, because what the actual fuck??

And I've written about science deniers, and the CDC and how much it sucks and how much we still have to rely on them for certain things.  I've written about our government's piss poor response to Covid under two different presidents.  I've written about coughing up blood and being denied care because there just weren't beds for people who weren't actively dying (even when it seemed like I might be actively dying). I've written about the eugenics of it all, the activism of it all, the EVERYTHING of it all.  

Right there, right out where everybody can see me, with my real name attached and everything. 

And mostly? In a turn of events that will shock exactly no one, most of those posts go nowhere, most of them don't get read, or shared, or it winds up just being me and my cousin (who is also chronically ill and has an immunocompromised kid) screaming into the void together, but I don't give a shit. 

that's not true I ...  DO give a shit, but only in the "well, people's true colors are shining pretty brightly, and I wish it weren't the case" kind of way.  Because my first couple of posts got a little bit of traction, but two years into yelling that people are scientifically ignorant on purpose and it's killing vulnerable people and disabling millions of others unnecessarily, and somehow people just... skip right past those. 

I talk & repost about it on Instagram. On Twitter. Tumblr, still. Fuck - I doubt there's a platform I'm on that I haven't posted something about it. And I don't care if people are tired of me talking about it.  

I am tired of talking about it too. 

 But I'm also tired of watching people die. 

Of being afraid all the damn time. 

Of pretending that ableism (and capitalism and racism and all the fucking isms) aren't poisoning us all so badly that most people don't even CARE that people are dying by the thousands every day. 

So I'm gonna keep writing about it, probably for the rest of my life, however long that manages to be.  Because this is worth writing about.  

And it's worth writing about, with my name attached. 

I'll probably still be back every now and then, so drop me a note if you want to say hey.  I miss y'all, and I hope whoever is out there in blogland still, is safe and protected and cared for right now. 

I'm not gonna make any promises about when I'll be back, but I'm glad I still have this little corner here, for thinking things through while I rant and rave about everything else going on in the world in all the rest of the corners you can find me in. And if you're looking for my real name, drop me a note, or your Facebook link, and I'll follow it to you, so you can follow it back to me. 

Because I'm writing about things that matter - just like I always have done - and I'm finally signing my name. And it feels good.