So, I hate typing on my phone. I equally dislike typing on the crappy keyboard of my home PC. Therefore, for the weekend- I took notes on what I would want to say here. And then? I’m still home sick today (Tuesday) so… I’ll make do with what I can!
On Friday, after I returned home I just… I really felt that calling for a cocktail. It was uniquely wrapped up in the thoughts about “I have things I want to do this weekend, but I need to give myself time to rest. I can tell I’ve been demanding too much from myself and… its a cheat code, but alcohol can bypass that active part of my brain that says STOP RESTING, THERE’S SHIT TO DO! ” But… resolved to push forward without drink, I decided I would just sit and give myself the night to play video games. Forcefully carve out some specific time to rest and just… not let everything fuck around in the brain. And yet… as the evening progressed, I could feel… my throat was getting sore and I was starting to feel unwell. BUT… I chalked it up to just… staying up late.
I permitted myself to sleep past my alarm on Saturday, so that I didn’t start mowing the yard until 10. Did the entire front yard, back yard, and then brought Nala to the dog park. SERIOUSLY the mosquitoes at the dog park are reaching a “Contagion Level”!! In the first five minutes, I got bit 10 times!! UNACCEPTABLE! But we still stayed out there as long as we could until I physically couldn’t stand it. And I mean that genuinely… I was getting ate up despite walking and being active and… it was bad. When I got home, I honestly felt… it wasn’t good. I was googling diseases linked to mosquitoes to see if just number of bites could influence feeling ill. With nothing in the house, really, and feeling like shit… I decided to order some Chicken Noodle Soup from the Chinese food place next door and had them deliver it. I was… not doing great and after finishing it, I went to bed around 8 p.m.
Sunday morning, I awoke feeling… so much worse. Like the “I can barely speak, I’m coughing bits of me out, really feeling shitty. So I e-mailed the director to let her know I would not be able to be at rehearsal and just stayed in fucking bed. I was cruising my streaming services and acknowledged how far behind I am in some things. So, I went to Black Mirror and started up with an old favorite from Season 1. Now, Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, The Hunger, Black Mirror… all of those are shows I genuinely enjoy on my own. But they are also things I share with Nancy… and not just because they are things we watched together (though there is that). Y’see… shows like The Hunger and Black Mirror can also be extremely sexy to the point of showing simulated sex scenes. For some reason, these scenes tended to arouse Nancy regardless of context. And for a man whose wife barely kissed him (the stage kiss Beatrice and I do is relatively on par with my wife’s kisses!!) finding anything that spoke to her libido was catalogued and highlighted!! So, I went and found the episode “The Entire History of You” to start a serious Black Mirror Binge. And… holy shit is time a strange beast. Nancy and I watched Black Mirror (Season 1) while I was in Law School. So, we were having those First Year 100% Celibate issues and Law School issues… it had all completely masked the fact that Jodie Whitaker was in “The Entire History of You”! I mean… Nancy and I were pretty good about Actors… if either of us had remembered, we would have watched that same episode as part of the lead up to Jodie being The Doctor… and I remember that weekend. We watched the official BBC preshow on that! We were excited to see Jodie’s Doctor! That was only… six years. 2011 to 2017! BUT think, honestly, about how much had happened in that time! I went from Law School to Jail Employee to Prosecutor to Immigration Attorney… we moved three times… we’d already been to 1 Marriage Counselor who straight up said that Nancy needed to change or we were headed for a divorce… time is a funny thing. And yet, as I lay in bed feeling like shit watching this episode from my past… there were some things that were inescapable in my review. It made me want to text Nancy, though I did not. Nancy was not a good wife. And, as evidenced by her behaviors after separating, really had no intention to ever be. But from the perspective of “someone to watch TV with?” From the “isn’t completely shit or absent when I’m ill”… in those ways, she was… good. Not sure if I would have expected her or been able to rely on her to walk the dog if I was sick at home but these pages suggest it would have at least been a possibility. And that spiraled into something of an introspective, though ill, thought loop. You see, I am sick… and my thoughts turned to Nancy. It wasn’t a desire to text Hermia, Essen, or Victoria… which OF COURSE makes sense but…that is also what my life has become… 41 years on this earth and the only two people that come to mind when I am sick are my mom and my ex-wife. We really have completely gutted the concept of Community in our world, haven’t we? That the only two people in my entire history that come to mind when I’m feeling weak, lonely, and vulnerable are my mother and my ex-wife. Which also sparks so many other thoughts. Like… I do still love Nancy the way one feels for a childhood best friend you’ve not seen in ages. She was an incredibly big part of my life and incredibly close. Thus the specific areas where she hurt me repeatedly, frequently, callously remain as dull, if flashing, warnings. And I think my past experiences have demonstrated that quite clearly. But there is still the primary wound that I brought into the relationship to begin with that seems I still repeat. You see, the best of Nancy? Someone to hang out with, someone to enjoy SciFi/geeky shit with, someone to sit and enjoy Dr. Who or MST3K or Anime… who I could talk to, who would care enough about me to care if I was sick. But into that relationship, because you always try to preserve the marriage came this “Anything for her” perspective. She hated her life. So, I needed to do anything and everything within my power to give her a better life. These pages are filled with that story so I needn’t rehash it! And since that relationship ended… I’ve been hoping to… wanting to… trying to replace it with a more perfect version. Where I still have the “buddy to hang out with” and the “friend I care for deeply” with the “mutual care and comfort” while adding the “actual physical relationship” and removing the “actively harsh, cruel taking things out on me” elements. But I still have a lot of work to do on this impulse regarding “Anything for her” which.... I’ll grant you, isn’t a problem when I can’t even find a woman to take to dinner! But.... is exactly how I wind up in messes like with Hermia!
That’s pretty much all of Sunday. Just… in bed, with a fever, watching Black Mirror. It is an interesting combination, watching Black Mirror with a fever, but it seems very much on brand for me!
Monday morning came and… I wasn’t feeling worlds better. Throughout the day, I would check my temperature and it hovered between a fever of 100.2 to 100.9. So, I was again forced to call in to rehearsal. This is (very likely) the most important role of my entire life and so… if I call in sick to rehearsal, you know how serious this is. Well, in an excellent show of “Chris, you are ESSENTIAL to this show”… since I couldn’t make it to rehearsal, rehearsal was canceled. I stayed in bed, continued binging Black Mirror and consuming Mucinex and adding to the now giant tissue mountain growing next to my bed. I honestly didn’t move from my bed much at all on Monday.
Which brings us to Tuesday. I was supposed to go into work today. But honestly? The congestion and the sore throat and everything? It is a Tuesday. I am supposed to have 158 hearings today. (1) That is a good way to make a lot of people sick; (2) that is going to be so taxing and draining to my voice and my energy that I could literally do nothing at all OTHER than those hearings today! So, I called in sick to work. BUT here is the most surprising and bizarre thing:
I have lived and died by a NO WORK/NO FUN rule. If you called in sick to work, you can’t keep that date tonight. A real world example that actually happened: I hated my telemarketing job and it was doing things to me. So I called in sick one day. But that was also the day I had tickets to see 311 and Matisyahu at the Val Air. BUT NO WORK/NO FUN, so I didn’t go to the show. I called in sick to work, so I was “calling in sick” to the show! Traditionally, this would be true of rehearsals as well! I called in sick to work, so I cannot be at rehearsal! BUT I will likely provide an exception for today. Based on several conditions. Primarily, that I have already missed 2 rehearsals based on this illness and only 1 work day so… balance. But also, at rehearsal… I will be masked. I will sandbag any movements. I will be ZERO CONTACT meaning no handshakes, no kissing hands, no stage kiss nothing. And as far as “Project!” bollocks to that! I am there to run lines and strike a mark and I am merely hoping I can succeed at that limited expectation!
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