24/04/2020:
My uni friends are eating pizza together over zoom tonight. I don’t really want to talk to them. I’m alone too much but I also only want to talk to the people I’m closest to. I know I’m very lucky. There’s been no new cases in my city for a while. I’m ok and my friends and family are ok (for now) and I’m hugely grateful for that. But I’m still miserable.
I don’t know why I’m having such a hard time. It’s not like this is very different from what my life it like anyway.
All the worries I had before this crisis have been compounded and a bunch of new ones have been added. I don’t know what jobs to apply for when I graduate and now I’m missing out on the placements which were supposed to help me figure it out. My queer loneliness is somehow so much worse when it’s imposed by a pandemic rather than just by myself and my location. I watched Portrait of a Lady on Fire yesterday and I loved it so much but fuck it’s made me long for intimacy.
I don’t know how careful I should be being about social isolation, it feels like I’m taking it the most seriously of the people around me and even that isn’t enough. I don’t feel like the government is handling this well at all but I don’t know if I have any right to say that since I’m no expert either. The federal government is trying to introduce a contact tracing app, but I don’t trust them to protect privacy. Testing criteria across Australia was broadened today, and it feels like that should have happened weeks ago. Schools are slowly being reopened and the NRL is starting training again soon, which seems like we’re just inviting a huge second wave. I recognise that sports are really important to many people but the idea that professional sports teams get to put the rest of us in danger makes me angry.
I was always going to be on holidays from uni for the last two weeks but I really don’t know how I’m going to cope when I start back. I’m supposed to be working from home but I just haven’t. Everything feels so pointless.
Dr Kristopher Lovell 