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This year has been really tough...and tougher than most.
I seriously thought that the majority of my problems was the year that my wife got out of the military. The financial troubles, the stresses of work, finding out I had PTSD among other things. Then the beacon of light and hope was finally getting to work at Gamestop (which I had a blast at). but then I got sick that December of 2019...a mysterious illness that no one could explain (which now I know was COVID). I was sick for months, eating so little I could see my wrists start to shrivel and my face start to shrink. I would choke on almost everything causing me to sit at the sink and gag and vomit until I could barely breathe. That dry cough that never produced anything more than some spit and yet it would only let me sleep for a couple of staggered hours a day. And the incontinence...for that entire time I was sick, I had to wear adult diapers because I was coughing and spasming so violently that I could not even hold my bladder.

It was embarrassing.

I was calling my Mother every other day and asking her if I was even going to survive. I had never been so sick, and I was scared. My wife thought I was overreacting (something she has since apologized for) and the doctors shrugged and said that if it did not get better after 4 months (or if I stopped breathing) that I should rush to the ER.

But even that wasn't as bad as 2020. In February...I lost my Step-dad...my Father Figure. After a long fight with cancer and then slowly losing his sanity due to not getting enough oxygen...his children were not watching him and so he tripped in his own garage, unplugging himself from his oxygen machine, and he suffocated to death. My entire world crumbled. The man that would sit on the porch and tell me about everything in life that he found beautiful...the guy who took in my Sister and I and would tell every single person that we were HIS children. we were not "his wife's kids", we were not "Judy's kids", we were his children. This is the man that first started teaching me to drive, the man who taught me how to chop wood, the man that taught me how to build a rabbit hutch, and the man that bought me horse-riding lessons and proudly watched as a cantered across an arena on that amazingly tall mare (that scared the s**t outta me).

I thought my world was fully over. How could it get worse? Well...it got worse...because COVID got worse. The world got worse and all the tin-foil hat, conspiracy assholes wandered the streets maskless. The idiotic and entitles teenagers and young adults wanting their "memories" and "spring break" happened. The people shouting "muh free-dumbs" at rallies, acting like wearing a mask to keep the population safe was some sort of oppression of rights...those idiots happened.

And because someone in my wife's family fit that model of "I'm healthy...I dont wanna wear a mask", my wife's family got COVID from that family member...her grandparents got it, her aunt got it, her own mother got it, and other family members got it. And it eventually took the life of her grandmother.

"Covid's survival rate is like 98%" they scream - well good for that, but tell that to my wife's Abuela who is now currently being viewed in her coffin today. "If you die, then you die. We all die sometime." they say right back. Okay, true. But tell that to the otherwise healthy woman whose only problem was that she was old? Tell that to the grandfather who is now quarantined at home and alone after being let out of the hospital because this disease took his life. Tell this to the Aunt who never smoked, was super healthy, but now is at home and on oxygen...AND she lost her mother to the disease. All because the survival rate is sooooooo high.

I'm tired of the mentality that everything is fine until it affects you personally. I hate that a majority of the population has to sit and wait for the consequences to happen to them before they change their mind...that they have to learn the "hard lesson" before something matters. this is why places like New Zealand and even Vietnam get to start returning to normal, meanwhile the USA is locking down further because we break records in new cases and deaths every.single.day!

It has gotten to the point where I have started removing my friends on social media...that say they are "sorry" for the loses but they still have their "opinions" and want their "rights". The tin foil hat gremlins in my timeline? Deleted. It's just sickening...and anymore...I just wonder how much more of this I can take this year.

I can't even begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel or even think that next year might be better because of where I live. We have spent so much money just because we need to order groceries, and prices are being gouged...and then there's the trip costs for funerals, etc. And I'm supposed to go home to my Sister's Wedding in October? Not even that gives me any sort of feeling of fun, happiness, or relief anymore.

IDK...I just had to get this out somewhere.