Here Are the Covid Symptoms for Omicron, the New Variant, According to Scientific Experts

definitely real and NOT made up!

apparently one symptom of Omicron is calling things “a renaissance painting” that don’t look like renaissance paintings at all? (this is a renaissance painting)

here are the symptoms for Omicron, the new Covid variant, as determined by scientists. again, I did not make these up at all, I am merely reporting the medical facts.

An inability to discern whether the fear of causing harm is a generous or a self-protective impulse. 

Nostalgia for places and times too recent to deserve that nostalgia. Telling stories about things you used to do and people you used to see and the careless way you used to live that color in the details brighter than they ever really were when you went to those places, did those things, or knew those people. Being aware that you are doing this, and continuing to do it anyway; noticing when other people do it and finding it equal parts grating and endearing. Some part of you thinks but why don’t we all stop, why can’t we all just admit to each other that we were rarely so happy to attend things, or to see people, that we rarely felt free of worry or found anything to be easy, that we were always annoyed and in a rush to get on to the next thing. But then understanding how these inventions buoy up the person talking, because you have felt how they buoy you up too, how they allow you to believe in some coherency waiting back there through the dark, out past the other edge of a long forest, somewhere on the far end of the night. 

That feeling when you notice the lights from a road or a train track in the distance out a small window, and you realize you can see whatever is driving there, moving across the view, going from somewhere to somewhere. Being up late at night and hearing a loud train whistle or catching the glow of brake-lights as they pass and thinking that maybe you aren’t old yet, and maybe nothing is yet over, or locked in, or decided for you. 

Talking for a year about how much you miss live music and how much it mattered to you and how you cannot wait to get back to see live music again and then when the opportunity to go see live music finally, briefly presents itself, being like “uh actually you know no thanks I’m good.” 

Longing for the idea, if not the reality, of fondue. 

Actually longing for the reality of fondue, sometimes. 

Looking at houses and apartments on Zillow that you don’t really have any reason to move to, and which for the most part you can’t afford. Spinning a new version of your life in each of these spaces. Telling yourself that this new place would, logically, solve every one of your problems if you could just live here, with these windows, with that view, with this washer-dryer, with all this space stretching out behind you, that a second bathroom would solve forever the problem where romantic love and the hygienic facts of bodies are made to coexist within the same literal and figurative square footage. Imagining yourself sitting at that window, in that room, at that kitchen island, with a cup of coffee in the morning, the day and your whole life gone smooth and easy as a freshly laundered piece of fabric, accumulating no traces and showing no stains.

That one thing you’ve had in a cart open in a tab for six months now, just in case.  

When it’s Tuesday and you don’t know.

Using one particular meme to explain yourself and your life or a part of it so often that it becomes built into your identity. Talking about the meme to your therapist and your dates and your parents and whomever else matters to you. Then the meme starts to fade out of relevancy at the lightning-fast speed that anything online does, and you realize that you are losing a language as fast as you gained it, and that now the way you explain yourself to other people is also a way of telling them that you are very old, and have been online for far too long. Being pretty sure it isn’t even cool to talk about memes anymore; continuing to do it anyway.

Saying that this year is the year you are going to get your winter coat dry-cleaned, no really, it really is. 

Talking too much about how hot Sarah Snook is and honestly waiting too long to get to the part where yes of course you know that all of the characters on Succession are monsters. 

Telling an overly personal story to the group chat and it takes four of five different texts to get to the end of it and by the end you realize it isn’t really as funny as you thought it was at all. But you’re here now and there’s no way to go back or undo it. Holding your breath waiting for a response or even for someone to just mercifully change the subject and act like it never happened; considering name changes and strategies for faking your own death in the meantime. 

The useless outraged longing to have known the versions of people you loved that existed before you knew them. A nervous hunger for stories about those people in those parts of their lives. The pleasurable sort of front-teeth-clenching ache at those stories, at the idea that you are nowhere in them, and could never have been part of them, that the whole point of someone else’s past is that it does not and cannot include you; your absence is how everyone you love got here. Trying very hard not to feel like love means that the story stops with you. A difficulty remembering that insecurity and even instability in relationships can be part of what makes them glitter and blink and light up brighter, and that this does not always have to be at odds with being safe for someone, and loving them responsibly. Trying to solve this equation, and coming up without a clean solution every time, the blackboard full of ecstatic chalky numbers. 

Really believing that if you could just afford that one dress (pants/coat/boots/going-out top/sort of underwear set that’s also an outfit that you definitely have any occasion to wear) it would change your whole life and no one would ever hurt you or talk about you behind your back again. 

Reading that “if you get sick, I love you,” poem on instagram, and thinking about what you will do if, or when, the person or people you love get sick. Weighing out the choices, all of which are bad, and deciding which bad choice you can best live with, deciding whether you would isolate from a loved one or just get sick along with them. Planning the little runs to the drugstore and the bodega in the cold for medicine and gatorade and weird snacks, a coat thrown over your pajamas in the universal sign for “can’t you see I am doing this in an emergency because I love someone.” Trying to make a game plan for the smells and way the space would accumulate clutter and then mess, for the nights when they can’t sleep or can sleep too much, for who you would call and when you would call them, if you could afford an ambulance and if it would matter. Planning what to say in an emergency room to make yourself look like a trustworthy person who deserves care and attention, and trying to ignore the hideousness of even having to game out these strategies, of even having to consider these kinds of things.

Telling yourself a story where the person you love is, after a long dark night, always ok, always returns, because past the middle of the imagined scenario, it is too dark to make plans or strategies, even though you know that those are the strategies that matter most. I love you, you think, don’t get sick, and then you wonder if that exhortation—don’t get sick, don’t get hurt, don’t be vulnerable, don’t be the crisis, don’t leave me—is a weak kind of love. Wondering how you can be strong enough to stand up not to your own essential frailty, which seems bearable and unimportant by comparison, but that of someone else, bound in skin and muscle and pre-existing conditions, their pumping and beating and living systems inscrutable to you, wholly outside your control, unable to be moved by love no matter its volume or its duration. Buying a gatorade or a lot of gatorades and waiting while you pretend what you are doing is not waiting. Trying to do anything but wait for it. 

Being embarrassed at every moment, I mean, really, about everything, being embarrassed about absolutely every single thing. 

Already being destroyed by the new Mitksi album even though it doesn’t come out until February. 

Believing that one day, if you can simply arrange enough of the correct things in the correct order, if you can go long enough without doing anything clumsy, without breaking anything, without making anyone angry at you, or raising your voice for any reason, or being late with or to anything, if you can return every text and every email and put every item where it is supposed to go, then you will wake up and finally not be afraid of what comes next. Believing, even though you know it’s a false belief, the sort of religious over-promise that people use to tunnel through the truth of their lives, that one day you are going to arrive at a future where nothing pounces when you let your guard down.

Not wanting to get into the shower but then not wanting to get out of the shower. 

this is an extra public edition of griefbacon; normally these are only once a week, but hey, merry christmas. theoretically, tomorrow I might send one more extra something that may or may not be about the most important film of the 20th century (A Muppet Christmas Carol). just a reminder that yearly subscriptions to griefbacon are on 30% off sale ($35 instead of $50) only through christmas day, and that a subscription makes a great last minute gift for someone or for yourself. I know there wasn’t a subscriber discussion thread this week, but it’ll be back next week. xo