(Content Warning: depression, chronic illness, sex negativity, current events, pet illness/death.)

2020 was one of the hardest years of my life.

The world was literally on fire. Florida unsurprisingly became an epicenter in the plague. The openly racist Orlando police attacked protestors and deployed military gear to intimidate civilians. I moved, which was a long and miserable process due to financial struggles and the pandemic’s impact. My aging dog had numerous health scares and we had to adapt to his changing needs. Several unspeakably terrible things happened to my partner Buster. The presidential election screeched by like an I-4 pileup in slow motion.

I also spent a lot of the year sick and struggling. In the early months I had the worst flu of my life (potentially – likely? – Covid.) Painful, debilitating IBS flare ups started in the summer and haven’t stopped. My depression and anxiety spiraled out of control, wrecking havoc on my capacity to function. Quarantine did a number on my relationship with my body. My autistic burnouts were incredibly sudden and stretched on for weeks.

I spent 2020 being much luckier than most, and I still barely made it out.

And 2021? Is not going much better.

reviewing sex toys in tumultuous times

One of the less dramatic – but no less taxing – struggles of 2020 was navigating my job as a sex writer. In March of last year, a writer I respect complained about the callousness of bloggers posting sex toy reviews during a global health crisis. In hindsight I recognize that their anger was misdirected… but I couldn’t shake the guilt and shame I felt. I went on hiatus for months.

I believe that sex toy reviews are sex education. They tackle sex stigma, empower readers to think about their pleasure needs and preferences, and give a platform to marginalized voices in an industry that’s still very far up its own outdated ass. When someone reads a sex toy review, they’re exposed to new language and ideas about what sex can be. They’re exposed to sex positive pushback against the sex toy industry’s shame-based marketing hype, sex toy gendering, and racial fetishizing. These things are no less valuable in trying times.

Even when there’s not a crisis pressing enough for even white Americans to care about (there’s rarely such admonishments during social uprisings or natural disasters), sex toy reviews are often disparaged as being the lesser, frivolous part of sex writing. But that sentiment often comes from people who either don’t actually read reviews, or who take for granted how revolutionary it is to read about pleasure from perspectives like mine: queer, trans, fat, and disabled. These perspectives and experiences are routinely left out of our culture’s limited conversations surrounding sex.

Further, this is my job. Sex toy reviews are many people’s sole or secondary source of income. Under capitalism, having to measure your work’s perceived value versus the weight of current events is a no-win situation. My bills don’t wait for permission from my own incapacitating impostor syndrome… or permission from my Twitter timeline.

I’m frustrated at how long it took me to recognize this. I hope it’s a lesson I won’t forget, because the world isn’t getting any better. This is my career as well as my creative anchor. It’s core to my survival.

continuously declining interest in sex

Unfortunately, misplaced guilt hasn’t been my only obstacle to sex writing in this pandemic.

Sex has been as as topically interesting to me as ever. But on a personal level, sex had never been lower on my priorities list. Despite spending significantly more time at home, last year I started having sex less often… if at all. Kinky weekend sex was replaced with video games and binge-watching tv shows. Stress-relieving sex at bedtime transitioned to falling asleep watching Youtube. I let my Filthy Figments subscription lapse. I scrolled past smutty fanfiction and Twitter nudes, uninterested. I stopped masturbating.

Initially, my disengagement from sex was because of pandemic stress and the RV I called home falling into dangerous disrepair. My partner started working from home, and we found ourselves arguing constantly – as most people would when stuck in 8 feet of space with a low ceiling. My A/C didn’t work, my shower and bed were literally collapsing beneath me, and the government was letting a plague spread unchecked outside.

When we moved out in the summer, we were functionally homeless for a bit. I wasn’t especially sexually inspired by sleeping on a blowup mattress in a relative’s kitchen or in a motel we technically couldn’t afford. Work-wise, I was often without internet access. When I was able to get online, I spent that time frantically scrolling through news about the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests.

Getting the keys to our new place was life saving. But 2020 kept on 2020ing.

In our new apartment, I was able to start taking on toys for review again. I was paid for some consulting work I did earlier in the year, and with that money I partially furnished our bedroom. I had cold A/C, internet access, and an actual bed… And, for awhile, the novelty of it all buoyed my interest in sex.

But the pandemic raged on. The election gained momentum and my existential dread grew worse. We were still stuck inside, our dog was losing mobility and having terrifying seizures, and the world hadn’t stopped burning. Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley were replaced with Pokemon Shield, Netflix binges became Among Us streams, and I still wasn’t looking at porn or masturbating. Our sex life petered out again.

Sex is just one potential component of a relationship, and it’s okay – and normal – if it’s not present in yours for whatever reason. But in my own relationship, sex is normally a prominent element. Its absence was a choice, but it also… wasn’t.

no such thing as a work/crisis balance

Because I was no longer regularly masturbating or having sex, I couldn’t finish sex toy reviews. I pride myself on being thorough, and a handful of testing sessions at random intervals is just not enough experience for me to speak from. I still have dozens of pieces partially written, waiting for another test session or three to finish forming my opinion.

Most of what I managed to publish in the last half of 2020 were guides and opinion pieces. I wrote about anal pleasure, giving sex toys as gifts, sex toy storage, ways sex toy shops are failing marginalized customers… It was easier to write from prior experience rather than present explorations. But even with non-review writing, I struggled more than usual.

(It didn’t help that for several weeks, I was the target of an online hate mob. I endured hundreds of harassing messages, many of which contained intentionally triggering content. My mental health suffered. My work suffered. I suffered, in ways I’m still not ready to articulate.)

To compensate for my slow pace, I started working ridiculous hours. I’d work through my partner’s shifts and keep working after. I’d have my laptop or phone at me at all times, trying to write even when I was watching tv or eating dinner with Buster. But it didn’t help me catch up. It just kept me exhausted at all times, and frustrated at my lack of progress.

In hindsight, all I was doing was wasting weeks tearing up my own work and burying it in overflowing WIP folders.

At some point in the depression blur that was fall and winter, I was sent a box of cookies by some very kind colleagues/pals. I decided I’d save them as a reward for getting one of my many big projects polished and posted. If I could just do that, I wouldn’t feel like I’d wasted a year of my life drowning.

The cookies are still sitting, unopened, in my fridge. It’s now May of 2021.

happy new year! it got worse

Like 2020, 2021 has crept along like the black mold on my RV ceiling: slowly, ominously, and wholly out of my control.

The transition to Biden (a marginally better alternative to Trump) was fraught with uncertainty and tension. Right wing terrorists attacked the capital. Covid deaths climbed to half a million people in the US alone. Preexisting problems grew ever-more magnified: police brutality, transphobic legislation, government apathy towards poverty and homelessness, genocide. We got a handle on my dog’s condition. Vaccines became available, but there was a lot of anguish and uncertainty about availability and access (especially in Florida.)

I’ve spent a lot of 20201 completely unmoored. Autism and depression (or maybe autistic catatonia) have always made time seem hazy to me. But combined with the constant, pressing weight of the pandemic, my dog’s health issues, and numerous personal struggles? I’ve lost track of hours, days, and sometimes entire weeks. My IBS has become legitimately debilitating.

Here and there, I’ve had bubbles of clarity. Good days where I’m close to my full self, present in this body that is so often disoriented and in pain. I’ve played with our feral rescue, I’ve written interesting content I’m proud of, I’ve left hickeys on my partner and put my feet in the sand. Surviving, not thriving – but who’s thriving these days besides billionaires?

I started masturbating again, sometimes. Watching porn, reading Filthy Figments, writing erotica for my partner’s eyes only. We bought an Eternity collar, and it went on Buster’s neck without ceremony or celebration, just quiet acknowledgment of things that have always been present. I’ve been testing toys, writing about BDSM, and I even filmed some educational content for SheVibe and Peepshow Toys.

The world was still in constant crisis. But sometimes, I felt okay.

In April and May, we got fully vaccinated. In slow unfurling of time between shots, we learned my dog was dying, and then he did.

This past year (and a half) has been the worst in a long line of worsts. But losing Marcus, especially when we were finally confident we could manage his health… After over a year of raw mourning for all the human suffering around me, the pain is too fucking much. I didn’t know my heart was capable of holding so much agony without ceasing to beat. Sometimes, when the absence of him seizes me, I hold my hand to my chest and feel that I’m still alive despite the impossibility of it.

where do we go from here?

I taught myself the importance of my job last year. But I think I have to learn it again. The pain I feel seems so consuming that it’s difficult to see the importance of my work and my words. It’s difficult to give myself permission to put my energy into literally anything besides staring at bad news and touching the edges of the wound in my chest. To feel present in my body when disassociating is all my body wants to do, twice over.

This blog isn’t just something for other people, or to pay my bills. It’s for me, too. It gives me a reason – and a way – to keep fighting struggles both personal and external. My work is my platform. I want and need to use it.

Likewise, I have to learn how to make room for sex in my life again. Part of that lesson is continuing to appreciate the things that fill the space that sex’s absence creates. Final Fantasy VII, showering together, watching video essays, painting, teaching our cat to stop being a dumpster gremlin, silicone poppers, going outside. These aren’t distractions from shared pleasure and intimacy, they are shared pleasure and intimacy. I’m grateful for them, and will continue to make time to enjoy them even as I reconnect with sex and masturbation.

At the end of July, we’ll have been living in this apartment – this wonderful, comfortable apartment, with great A/C and my own work desk and my dog’s empty bed in the front closet – an entire year. I’m going to spend the rest of 2021 giving myself permission to be at home. At home in this apartment, in my work, and in my own body.

It’s going to keep hurting. But that’s something I have to give myself permission to do too.

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