You Fucking People Make Me Sick

You may have noticed that I haven’t published very much over the past year. The pandemic has made many things that were easy difficult and things that were difficult next to impossible. Writing is among these things for many people, myself included; entering the second year of being trapped indoors has not made it easier to settle into a productive routine, in the same way that being crushed by a rockslide doesn’t help you build muscle tone. Curiously, many people are not trapped indoors: a large portion of the American population is willing to kill or infect others for a trip to the bar or a cup of Jamba Juice, and while this is scary and embarrassing it still surprises me that I remain surprised by it. After all, I’m very used to having to live with problems that other people do not take seriously.

Being a type 1 diabetic, a recovering addict, and a person with a learning disability has made me feel as though I’m better prepared to ride this out for the long haul than many of my fellow citizens. The Dead Kennedys have a greatest hits album called Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death, and like many of their songs, the name of this album is only half-joking when it describes an extremely specific, very American mindset. I almost died from diabetic complications when I was one year old — a quick thinking ER attendant was the only reason doctors didn’t keep treating my baby ass as though I…