Bonafide

… in which i am officially declared unemployed …

The locusts have arrived, which feels like its own season within the sweltering summer season. First it was just one – an early, over-excited cicada bursting forth with its late summer vibration song. Now there are many. The sound arrives in layers, locusts near and locusts far, so that their songs overlap one another. As one crescendos and then tapers, another can be heard just revving up.

It is a lonely opinion, but I love the sound of locusts on the summer air. Like so many of the sights and sounds of Ohio, they signal childhood, seasons, home.

I could hear them on Monday and Tuesday because we got some relief from the heat and I heaved all of the windows open. Fresh air. Crickets. Critters baying and creeping in the night. I woke up to the sound of birds singing for the first time in weeks. Smiled into my pillow before I rolled over and tried to snatch one extra scrap of sleep.

I feel more officially unemployed now. A whole month of not working, though lightly peppered with work trips that are one-part job interview, one-part labor marathon. A writing retreat. A trip to visit my folks. The days haven’t settled into anything that feels like a pattern; there’s no scaffolding holding the hours of the day in place. The difference is only this: The state of Ohio has formally recognized my status as a not-working person. I’m bonafide.

There is a small part of me that feels that cringes away from the word: Unemployed. Call it a break, a sabbatical, or a temporary reprieve. Make sure you underscore the fact that I entered into it willingly, that I needed to tap out to start unwinding the terrible burnout that had hollowed out my bones and left me singed and crumpled and depressed. That I will own up to. But merely unemployed? Shudder. No thank you.

Nevermind that I’ve been working nonstop for nearly thirty years. (See how defensive I am?) I’ve been working sInce I was fifteen, when I waited tables at Sugar & Spice, pouring coffee and serving breakfasts on Sunday mornings. Back ten I was almost-but-not-quite too shy to approach the tables. I always forgot to ask what people wanted to drink. Had to steel myself a second time and reapproach the table, doubly embarrassed because of the oversight. I went home after every shift with my clothes and hair and coat smelling of grease and coffee and cigarette smoke.

The things that date me: It was still perfectly acceptable to smoke at a restaurant when I was a teenager.

The Ohio unemployment website appears to have been designed at the turn of the century. There’s a message center with very important communications, but you can’t just open and read anything. Every single thing has to be downloaded and opened. And every day I get a message in my email that there is a new very important communication demanding to be read. Probably time-sensitive. Possibly a load-bearing message. So I log in – ever dutiful – and download the message, which usually says something that is not at all important. We agree that you are unemployed. We will send you this much money, which is the same amount we told you before. There’s something Kafka-esque about it all, but translated into digital. A swirling maze of clicks and bites and pixels all leading nowhere. But they do distribute the checks, and I’m grateful for that. Takes the edge off of not getting paid during this brief sabbatical.

My digestive illness came back a few weeks ago. Of course it did. DIdn’t it know I had plans for how to use this time?

Twisty bowels, deep fatigue. This time at least I knew what it was, what to do about it. I had a diagnosis that I could take to the doctor to get it fixed. I would have thought it would crumple me, what with all of my lingering victimized-by-malady feelings about it. But it didn’t. I accepted it stoically and messaged my doctor. And then another doctor. And then another, because – silly me – I had been healthy for long enough that none of them had a near enough history with me to take any action. Another Kafka-esque pursuit ensued. We have a pattern now.

I landed in my primary care doctor’s office where they started the visit with a sincere apology. They didn’t want to prescribe the medicine – it was out of their scope of expertise, they’d never prescribed it before, I needed to understand – but they could get me an appointment with the GI specialist in a month. I cried so hard at the prospect of having to wait a month, to feel myself slowly getting sicker and sicker, knowing all of the auto-immune symptoms that would flare up in the meantime, that they eventually reluctantly relented and backed out of my room slowly while I sniffled and dried my eyes.

My Mom and my husband both told me they were glad I cried, which is a strange thing to be told, even when it’s meant comfortingly.

I talked to my Dad about it. He has the same condition I do – microscopic colitis, which occasionally flares up – and his experiences mirrored mine: Even once you know what it is and what will fix it, good luck navigating the healthcare system and getting the medicine you need. Har har har. The only difference is that when he has a flare up, he loses weight. Whittles down to bones and sinew. Not me. Nothing makes me lose weight. Nothing. I can somehow be shitting myself to death and still gain five pounds. From a fundamental-rules-of-science perspective, I’m not even sure how that’s possible.

I couldn’t write when I was in the thick of it. Can barely write now, if I’m honest. I’m sitting here, typing, thinking about how I would really like to go lie down because this fatigue I’m carrying around is just so heavy. BUT – silver lining – at least I don’t have to work right now. Because I’m bonafide unemployed, did you hear? When I was sick the first time, trying to do my job in the midst of it, bowed over by that big, thick tiredness, I felt like one of those oxen that’s yoked to a millstone, pulling relentlessly against a heavy weight. It felt impossible, but somehow I dragged through it.

Time feels like it’s evaporating out from under me in a strange way. I’m recovering. Should be resting. Am resting. But there’s a voice behind the curtain always chiding me when I’m not doing more. MORE MORE MORE. It’s so demanding. I wanted to go to the pool Tuesday – the weather was pleasant, a breezy mid-seventies. It’s wired into my brain to think it’s practically criminal to waste a day like that – think how I’ll pine for a day like this when it’s January and has been gray and iced over for a month already? But my stomach was still twisty, and somehow being sick triggered my back, which was teetering on the verge of going out. What I probably need most was to just … lie down. So I did that instead.

It’s the hardest thing to do. Not just to rest, but to give in to the necessity of resting. To rest willingly and joyfully. To see it as its own kind of important doing.

The drawback of the medicine is this: It makes it so hard to sleep. Multiple nights in a row I’ve seen 4am, lying in bed and wishing hopelessly for sleep – all of my cells in mutiny, disorganized with fatigue. The illness makes me tired, the medicine makes me sleepless. Did I mention that I’m grateful not to have a job to clock in to these days?

I’m reading so much these days. Novels, yes, but also … essays, poems, short stories. I feel the wings of my reading spreading wide, encompassing more and more, pulling things closer in. Reading isn’t writing, but it is important. My inputs are good. Are better and better.

That is the one good thing about forced rest. It guarantees more time for reading. I’ve gobbled up three novels in as many days. Good ones. On to the next!

So … that’s what I’ll do in the end. Pick up a book – one that’s been taking up space on one of my various book-holding surfaces, digital or visceral – crack it open, and give in to the demand to rest. And if I’m lucky, I’ll even enjoy it just a little.