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can't wait to see what befalls me next week
I love my job, but it is killing me.
You know how when you are dying because you need an organ transplant, sometimes someone dies and you get their organ, which is really weird because you were all ready to die and now you have a piece of someone else inside of you for the rest of your life, but hey, at least you're alive! but then your body rejects the transplant, so you die anyway?
Like in 21 Grams with Sean Penn getting the heart of Naomi Watt's husband, but then dying anyway after impregnating Naomi Watts? Oh, hey, sorry if I just ruined the movie for you, but the movie kind of ruins itself with its choppy narration and constant backflashes and forwardflashes; so that you already know most of what's going to happen by the time anything does happen and you are so dissociated from the entire storyline that you really can't care anymore. Also, it is really weird to see Melissa Leo play any character that is not a tough as nails cop named Kay Howard.
I feel like my body is rejecting my job the way it would reject a transplanted organ. My body refuses to accept that I have a job and have to work and puts up any barriers it can think of to my getting any work done. Last week it was the flu. This week it is burning, dry, itchy eyes.
As soon as I sit down at a computer, my eyes start itching and I want to scratch like a flea infested dog. Working through the pain only makes it worse.
"Are you okay?" concerned co-workers ask when they see me.
"I guess."
"You look really tired," they say.
"My eyes are itchy," I explain.
"Oh!" says one, "That happens to me when I'm playing tetris! If I'm staring at the screen for too long I just start crying!"
They all offer me eyedrops, but I refuse. Then I have to explain my eye-poking phobia.
It gets the same weird looks as my squirrel phobia.
I am afraid of getting my eyes poked out. (Also, clawed out by squirrels.) Thus, I am afraid of anything getting anywhere near my eyeballs. I don't wear glasses, erego I have never had to deal with a contact lens issue. Usually, whenever I get a piece of dirt or an eyelash stuck in my eye, I just blink until I make myself cry and it comes out.
A few weeks ago, I had something stuck in my eye that was just not coming out. I tried every combination of blinking, rubbing, etc. I became frantic. Then, the unthinkable happened.
I TOUCHED MY EYEBALL WITH MY FINGER FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER IN MY LIFE.
It felt a lot more dry and rubbery than I had imagined it would. But it was still really, really weird and gross. That's all I have to say about that. Because everyone I have told this story to has been completely unimpressed. Everyone touches their eyeballs a thousand times a day, apparently.
Anyway, the eye-itching has gotten to be so unbearable that I didn't go to work. Also, I broke down and bought some visine. It took me, and I am completely not exaggerating here, about seven tries before I could manage to get even one drop in. And then about seven more before I could get anything in the other one. But I did it! Kind of freaked out, but oh so proud of myself. I! Did it!
The relief lasted for about ten minutes.
My body: "Ha! Nice try! Good of you to go to so much trouble to get over your psychological hang-ups for my sake, but I'm afraid that it simply won't do. Remember that two week break you took, where you looked at a computer like twice and slept in until noon every day? Give me some more of that."
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