thematically speaking

 I'm probably going to change the theme again to something that isn't so blatantly shouting "I suffer from depression"

perfectly normal times

 You can isolate yourself and get deeply weird and no one will really stop you. You are an adult! It is your right.  

You can swipe left or right on the dating apps and not talk to anyone who matches with you. 

You can refuse to have even a five hour plan, let alone days/weeks/years. 

You can stop trying after your last serious relationship and just watch your cats die of old age. 

You can sleep late, eat cookies for dinner, and slowly fade out of your so-called social life like collateral damage from careless, joyriding time travelers who have just oopsed your chances of ever existing. You can let it slide so far that the most socialization you get on any given day is 10 seconds of chit chat with the baristas who sling your coffee. They say they admire your translucence, the way the light refracts through you, but you suspect it makes them dizzy. You understand, the light you refract seems wrong somehow, plagued beams on an unholy spectrum. "time travelers..." you say with a shrug. They smile uncertainly in your sickly glow. You appreciate the effort they take to be kind.

You can just drop anchor, and survey the lifeless seas around you. No wind in your sail, no refuge on the horizon, no compass to speak of and no place you were going to. You can be lost at sea because you're lost on land. You can just do that. You are protected by law.

You can assume you can end your isolation at any time, that there are any number of access points to the social web all around you. You will be tragically wrong, but you could be forgiven for assuming that, given that it is true for long stretches of time. You will notice you have left yourself completely vulnerable in any public emergency, which you naively assume is never going to happen. In the unlikely event of a pandemic, picking an example out of thin air, you will be utterly fucked. Truly boned beyond all imagining, socially speaking. You will make no one's "pandemic bubble." because you have not been there for anyone. You will be grateful not to have coughed yourself to death, though. That part is nice. But you are allowed to leave yourself stubbornly flat-footed in the face of literally any eventuality. You are an adult. It is your right! It's remarkably stupid, but you can do that to yourself.

You can decide this society is so appalling you'd rather just not participate. It's childish, but you can decide that too. You're not wrong exactly. Living in a society of angry primates who hurt people for money and like to condescendingly tell you why hurting people for money is GOOD, actually, at every happy opportunity: funerals, grocery stores, online message boards where everyone agreed that guy had it coming. In fact, maximizing misery is the only thing that can happen in this or any universe, you naive child, you utter fool. But still. Apathy? That's NOT productive. 

You can just be lukewarm so god will spit you out of his mouth. In the happy circumstance that god is not your dad and trying to devour you, you are happy to be god's spit take. You might take some solace in the fact that spit takes are inherently funny, but it's something of a bummer that you have lost your sense of connection to the divine, a sense of place in the daily warp and weft of creation, knit daily, and thanklessly, by the nornir, who have for some reason not formed a union to fight these sweatshop conditions.* 

You can hope for some sort of divine epiphany. that your purpose and your place in the world will just get beamed into your mind from somewhere good by someone kind, but it doesn't seem to work that way too often. It has happened in fits and spurts (that's what HE said!) in your life, blinding moments of clarity, but it's not something you can depend on. God helps those who help themselves and have somehow escaped being devoured by Him. And information wants to be free but it wants you to come get it because information is laaaazy and frankly that's embarrassing for information. Information should assert itself. Look what these primates do to it when they try to grab for it themselves! Mangled beyond recognition by their messy emotional needs. Sad.

You can be tired of this planet and these people and being caught in the endless tangle of their lives, but that's just life in this place and escaping this gravity, well.... Also, you are not blue, you are not all powerful and you are not swinging the biggest blue dick anyone has ever seen on a movie screen and no one wants to "take Manhattan" if you know what they mean. 

You can be okay, regardless. You can just sit with your disconnection, your dissociation, and your apathy and watch it like a curious dog. A curious dog who's been to therapy and is taking notes. "How do you feel about that?" Your inner therapist dog might ask. "I don't know." you say. "Hmmm." says therapist dog. He is taking notes again. You suspect he is not convinced. Also, you suspect he cannot actually write. He is a dog.

You can get a little weird in isolation and no one can stop you. That's okay! It is your right. When you finally figure out what you want and where you belong, you'll remember you like weirdos and it won't be a problem at all.

*"Well, they CAN'T stop or creation ceases to exist!" you might say. Maybe the truth is, time just stops until they resume knitting and 5 15 minute breaks a day with an hour for breakfast/lunch/dinner would affect nothing. Maybe time freezes 8 times a day but we never notice because we are linear beings, who will forever remain blissfully unaware of every little blip and burp in the time stream. Did you ever think about THAT, smart guy?