Flesh Prison
Having gone through the most notorious technical institute in the country and various tech job afterwards, I'm no stranger to death by exhaustion or its derivative illnesses like GERD. Indeed, a personal acquaintance had recently died in his sleep, GERD being the prime suspect. I did not inquire further. It was too close to home and way too scary to think about.
I developed GERD in the second year of college. It was such a common thing that people passed around tips to manage symptoms and survive enough to get your job done. Most days, I could get it under control. Along with many other sicknesses I got as a payment for college, the only way I could hold down a job is to work remotely.
I'd had one year where my body felt well enough and I could keep up with nourishing myself.
It was the year I got unemployed following a layoff.
I had just survived from a fifteen-days overtime. I hadn't been able to cook since last year or so when work really ramped up, so overtimes caused the toxic cycle of delayed mealtime=>too weak to do anything=>no energy to cook=>delayed mealtime. I schedule deliveries, but more often than not had to wait till the meeting's over to fetch the food. Fortunately, a roommate helps me in days I couldn't leave my laptop long enough.
Sometimes I'm afraid I would die in my sleep.
Tonight I finally made myself a meal out of fear and desperation. Overtimes had shifted my body's metabolism. I get hungry in weird times, and it would take a while to normalize. I intended to just leave it and sleep, but I could feel the gas in my throat. I'm really sleepy. My head hurts. But I'm too afraid to fall asleep like this.
It pains me to see all the spices past expiration date. They're dry, they're still safe to use, but they occupy an amount of mental space feeding me with guilt the more I see them sit. Eventually, I want to return to cooking. Eventually, I want to take care of myself.
I wish I could stop time.
I can only choose two: take care of the house, make arts, hold down a job, cook. I've long given up on taking care of the house and set funds aside to have a cleaner routinely make a visit. I wish I could cook and make arts, but apparently you need money to live. I pushed arts aside for the longest time, and I ended up drowning.
I don't want to sound ungrateful for my job. Despite everything, it still pays decently (compared to minimum wage). Many of my friends have worse jobs with worse pays, they would probably be happy to have mine. But man, I do wonder if I can survive another year.
Every now and then I tell myself that I am being lazy, that I could certainly find a way to fit simple cooking into the equation. Surely? And washing the dishes, because they're sadly not going to clean themselves.
I know better.
Still, I wish having a physical vessel isn't so difficult.