muted

I've had no voice for several days now. Actually, I have a whisper of a voice right now, but for three days, I had none at all. Couldn't scream if I were being bludgeoned with a tire iron. I had a dream to that effect, where I had to save a good friend from a scary, knife-wielding dude - without screaming. In the dream, I had some sort of premonition that he was the stab-to-death type, so I hid all the knives, threw all her stuff off the balcony and pushed her out the door and down to the car, as we heard him thrashing around looking to kill us. Can't be louder? Be craftier, I guess.

Anyway, the loss of my primary vehicle for communicating showed me a couple of things as I sat at home, whiling away the time on my tempurpedic, trying to come up with shit to do. One: daytime television is extremely boring once you run out of NCIS reruns and dvr'd documentaries to watch. Two: it is extremely frustrating to try and get even one keyword out and still have that word misunderstood, and Three: I talk to my bff a lot and probably saved a ton of cell minutes over the last few days.

The most important side effect though, was an understanding of what my dad must be going through. My dad has a degenerative condition that is basically shutting down systems in his body ever so slowly, one by one. His voice was one of the first things to go. Talking to him is an exercise in frustration, because you end up saying 'what? what?' the whole time, and he gets pissed off and just stops talking. Having no ability to speak all of a sudden - for good - must have been completely horrifying for him. He said now it's like the driveway doesn't go all the way to the street. He has all of these thoughts, but can't relay them, because without getting cortisone shots in his vocal chords - a pain I cannot imagine - his voice will continue to deteriorate until he can barely whisper. Add to that the fact that his motor skills have been taken away and he's basically becoming a prisoner in his own body. My little bout with laryngitis is nothing, comparatively. I was bored for a couple of days and nearly hacked up a lung. Big deal.

I am trying to keep that in mind today as I get the cold shoulder from my boss and some of my coworkers. It's all about face time in this joint. Of course, it's totally my fault that after the marathon my boss got sick and passed it along to me. Totally my fault that my immune system was down a little and needed a re-boot. My bad that two boxes of lemon ginger tea and enough soup to take a bath in, didn't bring it back. Today, after two days of literally not speaking at all, to anyone, my voice is strained, at best. It's audible, people. The problem is audible, as in there is proof every time I say a word that this isn't a clever ruse to get out of work and enjoy the rainy weather.

These people suck. Study, study, study, I say. Looking forward to that move more and more everyday, now.