I spent most of last weekend, that lasted three days, sick with some respiratory issue. I returned to work on Tuesday only to wake up the next day with a fever, and I tested positive for the flu. I must have caught two separate diseases, but it doesn’t surprise me, because literally every single coworker was going through a respiratory issue of their own. I suspect that when I return to the office tomorrow, I’ll find out that we’re forced to mask ourselves up for the duration of the work hours.

Apart from being sick, I have been significantly depressed. Having to attend family functions due to the holidays only worsened my mood: the noise contamination for someone with a sensory processing disorder, the absurd amounts of food we’re supposed to gobble up, being forced to listen to their mind-numbing opinions, etc. Ever since I was a child, being around family members only made me feel alone. I don’t have anything in common with them, and when they attempt to relate to me, they make it clear that they believe themselves to be dealing with someone very different from the person that exists in my brain.

For as long as I can remember, I have yearned to distance myself from my family, as well as from everyone I’ve known, even putting whole continents between us, but I became a lousy adult with a deficient capacity for self-organization due to my brain issues, so I have never strayed far. On top of that, because my life must be some kind of cosmic joke, I even work with a loudmouth family member, which frays my nerves for most of the work hours. I also suspect that it contributed to triggering at least one of my episodes of arrhythmia. Unfortunately, I don’t work at the kind of office that allows you to isolate yourself with noise-canceling headphones.

Some months ago, I used to make myself available to online acquaintances to have a chat from time to time, but for a good while I haven’t felt like dealing with human beings in any capacity. Having to force myself to interact with people at work only reduces my willingness to do so in my spare time.

Although I’m a thousand words into the current scene of my novel, I’ve had to trudge through the mental fog characteristic of depression, and I haven’t had much energy to do anything other than sit at my desk, read manga, or play a video game. I can’t count how many times I’ve found myself this week shedding tears to a song, often to the same song on repeat. When I go to bed, my brain treats me with elaborate nightmares related to my lost youth and/or failings. I’m nearing 39, and it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that growing old will consist on accumulating more and more regrets and griefs until I break one way or another.

On a happier note, I’ve managed to distract myself thanks to the UEVR tool that a certain “praydog” and his team put together: it turns Unreal Engine games into VR games natively, even though they weren’t made for VR. Obviously the performance of plenty of them will depend on your rig, and I haven’t upgraded to the 4000 series (I’m waiting for them to release the new generation, that will hopefully prevent me from having to upgrade my PSU; the 4090 is an energy hog). However, I played through most of Life Is Strange, that silly teenage drama that released now nine years ago, featuring interesting plot points related to time-bending powers, but also featuring godawful, embarrassing dialogue along with one of the most infuriating, if memorable, characters from the fiction of that era: Chloe Price, a terrible brat that reminds me of my sister when she was a teenager. At least Chloe can use her dead dad as an excuse.

Fuck you, Chloe. I liked you better when your father was alive.

The game also features the following moment, related to beans:

Anyway, playing in VR confuses your brain into believing that it’s more immersed in the experience: scary situations become terrifying, tender moments become heart-warming, and sad moments can wring quite a few tears out of me (in Life Is Strange, the whole sequence involving the protagonist returning to her tween self, and the consequences of altering that past; in Cyberpunk 2077, when I played it in VR, the beginning of the second act, when V finds out that she has contracted a brain guest that may end up replacing her). Also, I’ve had better orgasms with VR sex than in real life. Too bad that it can’t replace intimacy (yet).

Not sure why I felt like sharing any of this information with you, stranger that for whatever reason took time out of your life to read this post. I hope it was worth it.