Iâm so incredibly sick of self care. I want to care for others and have them care for me, I want to exist in community, but more and more I feel like that falls through my fingers, and the sicker I get the more people tell me I need to take care of myself, put myself first, as if that would cure my sickness; as if that itself werenât the sickness. It gets worse from here, is the thing; I see the tide pulling out. People retreat to their nuclear families, friendships wither, I know Iâm only tumblr old, not Old-old, but I know that these things only get worse the older you are and the more the remorseless logic of neoliberal capital advances and I donât see either of those things going backwards any time soon.
When I was in hospital, people kept telling me that I needed to put myself first in order to get better, but actually the thing that helped the most was making friends and forming a group of people who supported each other. And the institutional living, for all of its many... well, I wonât get into that... but it did facilitate such communality, in a material way; we ate together, had rooms a few steps away from each other. I donât want to go back there, I donât want to be in an Institution ever again if I can help it, but I donât want to live like this either, like an atom bouncing around and occasionally colliding with others. Iâm so tired of cooking for myself. Iâm tired of nobody wanting anything I have to give.
And thatâs the thing. It gets worse from here, but then again, I canât entirely absolve myself. Iâve been judged and found wanting, again and again. There are people who get to live in community, but I feel like Iâve been auditioning for that my whole life and never made the cut. Iâm so desperate that Iâve fantasised about somehow Acquiring A Child (admittedly a fantasy thatâs somewhat vague about the details of this), and the worst part is that that would solve at least part of the problem, because what I canât stand right now is having to wake up every morning and justify almost everything I do by how it will affect Me. At least my cat needs me. But thatâs all Iâve got going right now, and itâs killing me.
