Drarrysexual EnBy Q

 I'm sick and feeling sorry for myself. So instead of working I'm blogging.

These days I feel a bit...unmoored. I guess I am depressed but being at home constantly anxious about the pandemic I don't see much difference. Recently noticed when I went back home. Home huh. What a loaded word. I am shifting to Bangkok now. After 4.5 years in Chiang Mai. Packing, moving, moving cats. Augh! 

But what I came here to say is that I feel fairly disembodied, a ghost walking through my life. Nothing really holds my interests. So I read. And i only read drarry slash fics these days. I have come to realise, (after having read a few million words at least), that people don't read fan fiction for variety and newness. But the certain certainties of happily ever after (or whatever tropes float your boat/s). It is soothing in a world wracked by anxiety.

I am anxious a lot. I lose my temper a lot and am very unkind to people who mean well. I am also indifferent a lot. That is to be our fate--how do you care in this world? Do you care for Kashmir or Palestine or Syria or Jehangirpuri or Climate Crisis or the passing of a recently rescued cat? Are you bad person for not reading the news? For watching cat videos instead of following-doing-banging your head on the wall about what's happening in your country (and beyond)?

But 'my' country...is also such.a.fraught concept. Not an ounce of nationalism---I'd like to say. But hoohoo how many times did I inform se asians who only look global northwards for 'expertise' that the biggest vaccine producer in the world is actually India. 

Anyway onto what made this post happen. So I gifted my dad a bottle of whiskey when I went 'home'. He's only just opened it and drinking with his friends and they are all praising it. It's some variant of laphroig. Which a(n ex) lover recommended and I liked it and it made me feel sooper adult to like a single malt whiskey. Recently after an entire pandemic I finally went to a bar in Bangkok and had laphroig after 2.5-3 years. And it was a bit like coming back into my body. Feeling absolutely one with my senses for the first couple of sips at least. I have never been able to meditate: often makes me very anxious, but mm whiskey. 

I will miss this sanctuary that is my place in Chiang Mai. It has sustained me through pandemic and panic attacks, depression and laughter, endless travel and discovery. More importantly my cats were at home here. I have been insisting that this reluctance to move is the inertia of having lived in one place for the longest time (this is the longest I have stayed in one city, in one house since Kolkata and my parents present residence). But is it really? 

Once upon a time I was looking forward to living in big-city-Bangkok. Now I am not. I hope that changes. And Bangkok proves me wrong.