(Content Warning: Contains Mention of Suicide Ideation and Death, Spoilers for Little Women)
I’m going into work in a bit.
Yeah, there’s a plague (I’m not sure if I’m allowed to call it that). But yes, I am a key worker and I need to go in and sort out medication for an at risk person.
I’m pretty bloody scared.
I’m not in the at risk group who have been told to self-isolate. I’m not in it by 100 mcg of my prescription. That isn’t much.
I could absolutely choose not to go into work. My sister and my girlfriends would really like that. The thing is, it wouldn’t be the right thing to do. I don’t know where this comes from, I don’t know if this is leftover Protestant stuff like the guilt and the work ethic. Is this just the work ethic in overload? I have a sneaking suspicion this isn’t actually anything nice like that, I think this supposedly moral stance might actually be my suicide ideation in truly twisted form.
I still can’t bring myself to email in that I’m not coming.
I might die this year.
If that need to go into work is my suicide ideation then my brain is distinctly less happy about this than it would have been as a teenager.
The thing is, if I’m going to die the likelihood is that I’ve already got it. If I’ve already got it then it’s down to my immune system, maybe my willpower might give me an edge, if it does then it’s a good edge. Is it enough? I guess we’ll find out.
I used to be fascinated by The Black Death as a kid, slightly less by The Great Plague. I think it was Children of Winter that I used to reread obsessively, it had a time travel element which is probably why.
Is my going into work somehow the result of thirty eight years of social inculcation? I mean Beth dies because she goes to nurse The Hummels through Scarlet Fever and there’s any amount of other ‘good’ female examples in literature who end up dead because they were the ones working in a plague situation.
If I die I want it to be because I’ve been a selfish bitch rather than a ‘dear, sweet girl’. But we’ll see.
Right, better get to work then.