My little azalea has been growing in the garden bed for 3 months now, and I'm the past week and a half has went from beautiful, luscious leaves to this thin, frail, yellowy sickly color. Does anyone know what the problem might be? I fertilize it every 2 months and water it during dry spells.

Azaleas in general need iron and an acidic soil (peat moss, pinus bark, kanuma).
Iron deficiency causes Chlorosis. Leaves get yellowish but veins keep green (I really can't see from your picture).
I use Miracid fertilizer from MiracleGro and it corrects both issues.
www.miraclegro.com/en-us/products/plant-...id-loving-plant-food
I am not saying this is the problem, but if it is, then you can try this product above.

Yes, it is yellowing in between the veins. It's in a sorry state now, but it was much more apparent about a week ago when the problem began and the leaves weren't as curled up. I genuinely think Chlorosis is the problem here after your description and I just bought two pounds of that Miracid stuff so fingers crossed my baby comes back!

It looks VERY dry to me. How dry/moist do you keep this?

I try to keep an eye on its moisture levels, since our summers can be pretty brutal for a few days on and off here in Southern Maryland. Luckily it's been humid and rainy lately. I checked the soil today and it's pretty darn moist, even a few cm down. I was actually more worried about root rot from too much water at first, rather than it being too dry. It might still be a possibility.

What is the pH of your soil? You need to check also for pests. I agree it does look very dry.

Intrigued_Voyager wrote: I just bought two pounds of that Miracid stuff!

DON'T use Miracid on a sick plant, let it recover first. And DON'T use a higher dosage. Two pounds will last you forever.

I use seaweed with sequestered iron several times a year, but that may not be what the problem is

If it’s not the PH, could be root damage/root rot I believe.
I would try to lower the soil PH to give it a chance for the recovery. ...but looks more like dried out before flooded on which case it don’t have much roots left.