Jay Elias | You can take it with you

"I have wasted Time, and now doth
Time waste me"
- Richard II

2002-03-20- 9:42 p.m.

Passing A Collection Plate For the Temple of the Soul

Sometimes I come home at night, and I say to myself, “This is the price that you pay.”
It rained today. It was rainy and cold and windy. I wore heavy cords and a really soft and comfortable turtleneck that my mom got me for my birthday that I haven’t worn much, because it says on the little label that it shouldn’t be put in the dryer and I can’t be bothered with all the effort of hang-drying it. When I would step outside, the wind ripped through it all like I was wearing paper.
I’m sick again too. No fever like last time (knock on wood), but my lungs are filled with some sort of phlegm or fluid or something, and I sound like a Harley without a muffler when I try to take a deep breath. And I ache a little. I hope to try and get some rest tonight. I slept well yesterday though, and I didn’t get any better. Of course, by sleeping well, I mean that I fell asleep shortly after midnight and got up at 5:15 this morning. I read recently in the New York Times that studies show that people who get less sleep live longer. Which I suppose is bully for me. I’m looking forward to my extra years of continued exhaustion.
Due to my continued illness, I made the radical decision of asking if I could take off for part of the day tomorrow to go to my doctor. I don’t even know if I’ll be able to get an appointment yet, but I feel rather terrible about it. My job isn’t like normal jobs, where you can take a sick day. I haven’t taken a sick day in years. I’ve worked with fevers, I’ve worked with bronchitis, and I’ve worked while I was aspirating blood. I’ve always credited it to the price that I pay. I want to be someone at the place that I work, so I give up my health. I give up my free time. I work for about what a McDonald’s manager makes an hour.
I’m feeling a little sorry for myself tonight, but I’m not hoping you’ll feel sorry for me. I’ve made all these choices of my own volition, and with my eyes open to what those choices meant. But right now, I’m feeling awful about the fact that I want to take off for three hours or so tomorrow to see a doctor, and I haven’t had a day off in eleven days. And I just found out today I’ll probably get to work this Saturday too. I shouldn’t complain; I need the money.
Today, I sat for a little while during a meeting, trying desperately not to cough because I didn’t want to interrupt the important people from talking, and I saw out the dreary gray window a bar with a neon sign that read Pilsner Urquell and was overwhelmed with the desire to just skip out, and have a beer, my health be damned. I never drink on school nights, ever. Not a beer when I get home, not a glass of wine with dinner. Not a sip. I keep myself in check, because it is the price I pay. Doing whatever I want in my free time isn’t compatible with making absolutely certain that I’ll be at my peak at work the next day. This past Sunday night, I went out with an old friend for dinner, and I was talking to him about St. Patrick’s Day. I hate St. Patrick’s Day in New York. I hate the parade, I hate the idiots who were playing bagpipes outside my girlfriend’s window at one in the morning on Saturday night for forty-five fucking minutes, I hate the drunken assholes outside every bar on every block trying to pick a fight with me or anyone else when I’m trying to go to the video store. And as I was railing to my friend about my loathing for them, I mentioned that I just couldn’t abide the sheer debauchery of it all anymore. And he stared at me. He knows me from the days before all of this, when I was as much of a drunken lout as the rest of them. When I did what I wanted to, when I wanted.
It doesn’t seem like much of a sacrifice, to not go out and get loaded whenever I want to. Truth be told, I outgrew it a while ago anyways. But right now, as I despair about whether it will look badly that I need to take the afternoon off to see a doctor, I think about the sacrifice. I’m worn, and I’m tired. I’d like to not feel this burden for a little while, for just a day or two. I’d feel better, I think.
The downside is that I want something else more than I want to feel better. That is the admission price to this particular amusement park of life. Some days I just find that there are way too many rides to go on before the fair leaves town.

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Doesn't Take Much and That's Messed Up - 2004-03-15
Like Water Under Bridges - 2003-09-08
Jesus On The Dashboard - 2003-08-13
An Administrative Announcement - 2003-08-11
Don't Worry, It's Coming - 2003-08-02

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