I’ve had a hard couple of days. The radiation treatments have left me tired and nauseous. My depression is acting up as well. When the body feels bad, the brain and mood follow or something like that.

At any rate, I’ve had a hard couple of days.

It’s not been helped by the thing that besets us all, by the stress that is so much a part of our days now, the new reality that the coronavirus has imparted. It seems unfair; we are, most of us, good people. Why then is this happening to us?

The answer, “why not” doesn’t satisfy and yet it’s the truth.

It happened because life. Because life happens and you can’t control it. All you can do is live it to the best of your ability.

Because life is unfair, I had to do the grocery shopping while feeling less than stellar. I do it every week and every week I hate it. But I do it because it’s out, and out is important since I don’t want to end up completely shut-in. Although “out” is easier on me in the age of social distancing.

But I still don’t like it, even though people are keeping two metres apart. Everyone seems to want eye contact and interaction. Plus, there’s the whole food thing.

So no, I don’t like grocery shopping even in the age of the pandemic when there are fewer people around to freak me out.

There was no one to help me unload the groceries when I got home, not that they ever do, not that I ever ask.

I like it best when people psychically interpret what I need.

I was feeling kind of sorry and put upon and I started thinking about the changes that have occurred because of the coronavirus. I had to buy a kind of toilet paper I don’t like because toilet paper itself was all mostly gone because people are a little bit crazy and I actually needed toilet paper.

And I thought about how quickly the virus spreads in ever-increasing circles and how, if you miss someone, they can infect so many so quickly. And I thought about gratitude.

Which is something we’re all supposed to be doing more often than we do.

 Gratitude is a wonder treatment for a variety of issues. It helps with the mood if you suffer from mental illness and if helps the neurotypical as well. I try to practice it consistently but I often fall off the rails. Depression makes maintaining things hard which is totally an excuse but it’s also a little bit true.

I have a daily gratitude app I mostly get to. I write down what I’m grateful for but it’s lame. Not the app – it’s excellent – but my entries. I sound like I’m being forced to write a “What I did last summer” back-to-school paper. I barely ever move outside my immediate life and circle. Hierocles would not be impressed.

I forgot what I picked up from my readings. About being grateful for everything because it’s all so amazing. How you can be grateful to multitudes and life itself for everything in your life, all the time.

And I thought about the bitching I was doing while unloading the groceries from a car I own that I drive to the store so I don’t need public transit, into the house I own with the places to store food where it won’t spoil because I can pay the electric bill. And I thought about the food on the shelves and all the people that it takes to get it there and the fact that I live in a country where a loaf of bread isn’t a day’s wages. The selection may be taking a beating these days, but I can still get stuff.

And I thought about the fact that although my brother’s business is shuttered, and my friends are off work and their bills are mounting, I’m doing okay. And I thought about how even though there are hard times ahead, so far – knock on wood – no one I know is sick and by no one, I mostly mean my parents because they’re in the high-risk demographic.

So am I, I suppose, but then we tend to view ourselves as immortal and impervious to the risks that surround us.

And I realized that I need to better on the whole gratitude front, especially now. And to be honest, after I finished the list of all the ways I was blessed, and after the obligatory self-slam about being a selfish bitch, I felt better.

And then I washed my hands.