Two months ago, I was planning to move about 4 hours away to the fair state of VA when my lease was up on 6/30. I was tired of living with my younger sister, who wasn't great about doing chores and in general being responsible, and couldn't wait.

One month ago, COVID started happening and by three weeks ago my sister was out of a job. We were rapidly moving towards shelter in place. At that point, I said, "My sister's on the dole, I can't exactly just move out and leave her in the lurch, I won't be going anywhere until she gets a job." My sister expressed being fond of the amount she was going to receive from unemployment (thanks Trump) and said she didn't want to look for a job, she wanted to save that extra $600 a check for the four months she would get it. I said, "Sister! I'm stuck here until you do something. Our lease is up 6/30. I just really would like to know what my options are and right now, you're telling me I just don't even really have any options because you're going to float aimlessly along and hope you can last it out until restaurants re-open and you can just go back to your serving gig."

This week, she comes to me. She's found a roommate with a place to move into 8/31. She'll have down payment saved due to unemployment, she knows the girl, she's doing it. (I think the girl's a bad influence and the apartment complex she's moving into is both gross and tiresome, but my sister needs to make her own mistakes. God knows, by 25, I had made all of these sorts of mistakes myself already, and she needs to get off the graduated learner's plan system we have going where she's not technically living with her parents but she's still sponging off our familiar connection to get a maternal/adult figure who takes care of 85% of household shit for her.)

Well, fuck. I was all freaked out about "What I was gonna do next?" and she went and made a plan. Now what am I going to do?

I don't want to move out of state if we are still shelter in place (or back to it) come August. However, the cascading effect of this is that if I don't move out of state this August, odds become less and less likely that I will at all. (This becomes a mathematical problem of how many times I want to pay to move on a yearly basis for multiple years, among other things.) I've made a pros and cons list. I'm trying to really figure out what I want to do/what's best for me. I don't know. And COVID-19 clouds all of it regardless.

Also, I realized this weekend that damn it, I am going to miss living with my sister after all. COVID's brought us closer. (Inevitable, right?)

The only real answer to my conundrum, besides pro/con lists, is "wait and see." 8/31 is almost 5 months off; no one even wants to show you an apartment unless you're trying to rent in the near future -- 2 months, 3 months absolute maximum.

But I'm the gal with all the plans, see. The single gal, might I mention? So today here I am. No known future. No partner and no ability to even try and date -- dating doesn't exist in COVID-19 world and you're stupid if you try -- just a big ball of "I don't know" and saving money while I still can. My work even got rid of mid-year performance management for everyone, so I can't even try to work towards that. I guess I'm lucky. My dad's work cut everyone's salaries 10% across the board. (I predict that getting rid of mid year performance management at my job might lead to no year-end reviews, which would mean no raises or bonuses across my company in the long run for 2020 -- I don't think my prediction quite makes me and Dad even-steven in the moment, however.)

I'm trying to do the best I can every day. I've run over 25 miles so far this month. I started yoga and factorial push-up sets. I'm reading a lot and making a hell of a bunch of stickers and I ordered like 5 paint by numbers and by god, I have watched so much TV and netflix. Podcasts. I'm even, finally, getting into freakin' podcasts. My family and I played Scrabble and Boggle this week. On separate occasions, even.

I still have to bite down this instinctive, initial rising anger whenever people in my life, who I call family and friends, attempt to reach out. To Facetime, to have us come for dinner unexpectedly (my parents are the only people I see), who ask me on the work chat, "How are you doing today?" I reinstall instagram to post on my art account and then I delete it again. Facebook? Dead to me.

I am that type of person that goes into quarantine and just wants to be left the hell alone. Except of course I'm not. Of course I'm angry because all of these attempts to reach out are abnormal, atypical, hell if you want you can call 'em false (and I promise, at least 90% of the reaching out done at work feels entirely that way to me). Each call is a reminder things aren't normal and, at the same time, a frustrating reminder, every time someone else asks me, "So how's it going?" or "What's new?" that really? It's a big fat old nothing. And you know it.

I'm doing the best I can, and I'm tired of self-pitying myself with weed and alcohol and overeating. I'm going to get my hands around this quarantine. I'm going to take advantage of it. One day at a time, everybody. I succeed if I succeed today.

And that, my friends, is how I'm gonna get through it.

Also PS yes consciously trying to accept the friendship and phone calls of other people who are only "bothering me so terribly" because they care about me and want to make sure I'm doing OK. And because we r frans and stuff and all that, so on.

Thanks for letting me get all that off my chest, Hubski. I don't believe I have it that bad even out of the stories in this thread. But that bad or not, doesn't make much of an impact on my feelings.