Letters from Quarantine: taxed severance pay and pooping with tampons

When you’re stuck at home for over a week, no matter how much you try to keep some semblance of a schedule, you find yourself asking questions like “Did I brush my teeth this morning?” and “Did I ever end up taking that shit yesterday or was that the day before?”

If you are like me, you’re in quarantine by yourself so this is a one person Q&A session in which you learn that apparently your ability to manage basic bodily functions depended upon going out in public at specified times every day.

Another thing I learned today is that the government taxes severance pay. I assume they just want to make it hurt extra to make sure you can still feel anything.

I keep seeing that the government will send us all $1,200 – the senate is voting on it today – which is great but also I have a feeling they don’t use Venmo and that this might take some time and effort on our parts. Not that I have a recommendation for how best to go about this. I have never claimed to be good at large scale logistics and sure I was an accounting assistant but for like a 20 person company…why do I feel like I’m in a job interview with myself? Oh, right, because America never just takes care of its people without having them “earn” it.

Why isn’t our actual official motto “There’s no such thing as a free lunch”? Does the country have a motto? I know states do. Virginia’s is “Sic semper tyrannis” which means “thus always to tyrants.” It’s admittedly a little lame and useless without the accompanying graphic of a man standing on top of another man. Do other states’ mottos require visual aids?

Of course now that I’ve actually sat down to do some work I really do need to take that shit that I’m pretty sure never happened yesterday. Also, I just put a tampon in, so there goes that rare resource.

No one really talks about how complicated tampons and pooping is. For those who aren’t aware, you can keep a tampon in while you pee (although it should be changed at least every 8 hours lest you DIE INSTANTLY of toxic shock syndrome according to everyone’s 6th grade health class), but you kind of have to tuck the string up momentarily so you don’t get pee all over the string. It’s much tougher to try to keep one in while pooping, though. For one thing, you just don’t want to risk getting the string tangled up in that mess but primarily, it’s just difficult to keep it in. The reason most women shit while giving birth (if you didn’t already know this, congrats you’re learning two things) is the same reason it’s hard to keep a tampon in while pooping – you’re pushing with the same muscles.

You might be wondering what the big deal is about taking a tampon out every time you go to the bathroom. “Surely, you must have to swap them out frequently anyways and you have enough control over your bowels to space these visits out accordingly,” you might be thinking.

You have so much faith in me.

First of all, I don’t have very much control to begin with. Secondly, it’s not always so simple. Some days of your period are quite light. On those days, you might put one in and have to poop an hour later and since your period is so light it’s quite painful to take the tampon out because it’s basically a dry wad of cotton. Furthermore, having your period can make your poops quite unpredictable. We call these Period Poops. They’re similar to Booze Poops in consistency, urgency, and surprise. So I might have just put one in while going pee and then suddenly needed to shit 10 minutes later and there goes a hardly used tampon during a pandemic with a shortage of resources.

Caring Too Much About Your Meaningless Meatsuit, 2020

About a year ago, my therapist, based on the things I was saying, asked me if I was worried about getting fat. I immediately said “no!” and knew I was lying.

And I NEVER lie to my therapist. She’ll be saying extremely insightful things about what I’ve shared with her and then she’ll ask me what my thoughts are on that and I’ll say “I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about any of that. I was thinking about what I’m going to have for dinner and I want to leave and this is annoying.”

Weight has always taken up a large chunk of my brain power. For the majority of my life, I was severely underweight. No matter what I did, I couldn’t gain weight and it was extremely difficult to even keep the little weight I had. People would tell me to eat food or they would say they hated me or they would say “I hate you eat some food.” Whenever I didn’t finish a meal, I was paranoid everyone thought I was anorexic and I was probably right a lot of the time.

I don’t know when the switch happened, but now I can’t seem to stop putting on weight. It’s nothing excessive; no one’s like “Holy shit what the fuck happened to you are you pregnant do you have a thyroid problem are you pregnant with a thyroid problem does your fetus have a thyroid problem.” But it’s been a gradual and steady increase over the past 3 years or so.

I know I’m getting older. I’m turning 30 this year. There was never any way I was going to keep looking like I did at 20 and thank fucking god for that because I was about 90 pounds. But Jesus Fucking Christ (his full name), I eat well and I’m active what the fuck. DO I have a thyroid problem?! I don’t know! Except probably not because I got tested for it a couple years ago when I was spiraling out about this.

It super pisses me off that this is mostly self inflicted shame. This is the era of self acceptance – I mean we have a long fucking way to go but it is sooooo much better than it was when I was a kid and before then. But in a weird way that also makes this extremely confusing. I think “Okay, my body is not exactly where I want it to be. I used to be extremely active. I will cut back some on the carbs and I will make a point of being more physically active than I am.” But then I’ll see a post from people I admire deeply that is all about how diets are bullshit and rolls on your stomach aren’t a bad thing and you’re gorgeous goddammit.

And they’re both right!

Being a woman in 2020 is deciding to go on a juice cleanse and then 10 minutes later being talked out of it by a song and then repeating the cycle until you die in your meaningless meatsuit.

I don’t know how much I should care. I don’t know who is the most right. I don’t know if there is an answer. All I know is this is driving me insane and I want to wear belly shirts again, goddammit.

Also it is so rude of my brain to give this so much thought to this considering the world is on fire. Perhaps it’s an escape, like a shitty rollercoaster that you get stuck on for so long you lose your lust for adventure and leave the park early (this is not an analogy for suicide, and I’m not lying to you like I did to my therapist).

AND what’s REALLY stupid is that I was unhappy with my body when I was super skinny and now I’m unhappy with my body now that I’ve put on some weight and for some fucking reason my brain can’t go “Upon review, we have discovered that your appearance means nothing so we will discontinue the self hatred protocol, thank you for your time.”

I do not have advice for this! But, like, please message me if you do.