Cabin fever

Thanks to my annual bout of bronchitis, I've spent the past week indoors. With the exception of staggering my way to the occasional class - which I only have three days a week, one of which I missed - I've been in my apartment. Bear came by to make sure I was alive, but other than that and my roommates delicately trying to keep from waking me while I was sleeping 18 hours a day, I've had no human contact.

And it's driving me batty. Granted, at this point, I'm through a five-day long antibiotics stint (and the forced sobriety that accompanies it), but I'm still hacking pretty healthily. I suppose now, it's less of a body-wracking cough, but still not fun.

But I don't care. Because I NEED to get out of the house. I almost snapped while talking to a professor today. Thanks to my cough-syrup-induced coma I didn't return her email for a few days, although when I did, it had the missing project attached to it. I understand this is less-than-professional behavior, although she did know in advance how ill I was (and I'd gotten the appropriate extension), the class is nonetheless a bullshit class where I'm the only senior and we do things like spend two hours discussing how to properly cite in APA format. Which I've known how to do since I was 14. Not to mention, we're journalists and therefore don't use APA for anything but bullshit academic projects. Anyway. She decided to pull me aside after class and scold me on how such a long response time would never be allowed in the professional world. I gritted my teeth and took it, but then she went off about how, were she my boss, she would have been calling me and calling me... The woman has my phone number. She could have called me. I left the room fuming more than I should have been, and had to spend an extra few minutes standing outside in the blowing lake-effect snow just to cool off.

I realized, after the fact, that my internal overreaction is almost certainly a product of my being cooped up for far too long. (And might have been some pent-up emotion about the fact that we spent the entire class talking about how people whose family members have been murdered do or don't process and heal. My teeth were hurting from clenching my jaw so hard.) But also, I'm co-dependent. I've owned it. But good lord, I didn't realize how quickly I'd become accustomed to seeing my boys each weekend. I really missed not just the company, but them specifically. I saw one of my closest friends (and the psuedo-ringleader of one of my groups of boys) today in class and spent the whole time thinking about what I'd missed out on this weekend. Which makes me question just how much of my codependence I'm really OK with. I don't want to be non-functional when I'm on my own.

I suppose I'm not, really. I'm going to go ahead and blame this on the fact that I'm terrible at being sick and alone. It upsets me on a pretty fundamental level. And then there's the less complex reason of - I really have fun with these boys. It's more fun than I have doing a lot of things, but infinitely better than being drugged up and trapped inside my long, narrow room. Which increasingly resembled a prison cell the more time I spent inside it.

Anyways. I spent the evening cranky - although it was helped by my Queer Writing course and subsequent speech by David Valentine, who was well-spoken and intelligent and interesting. He's best-known for his book Imagining Transgender. I haven't read the entire book, though I have worked through a few chapters. Dense, fascinating material.

I came home to find my roommates had made dinner - including a special portion for me. (I've got an obnoxious food allergy that they very kindly accomidate.) Lovely surprise. We each take turns cooking, but there's no particular schedule. But that helped with the foul mood. And then we watched Jeopardy - a strange but enjoyable ritual where we pretend we're smarter than the people on the show. Then it was on to House, M.D. I don't normally watch, but this show featured a child who was born intersexed, and we'd just been discussing it in my Queer Writing class. Took the opportunity to educate my roommates and make clear - once again - my stance on some homo/queer/transphobic statements one of them was throwing around.

And now I'm holed up in my room again. This time chatting with Friend and our mutual friend, slowly working on plans for spring-break-slash-birthday-athon 09. I'm pretty excited.

And to top it all off? I'm listening to nothing but Blink-182 tonight. It's somehow strangely soothing. I think it might just appeal to the overly dramatic side of me that was reigning today. Nevertheless, punk-pop reminds me of high school, and how nice and simple my problems were then. Actually, no, that's a lie. My problems are simpler, easier to solve now. And less severe, for the most part. Does that seem backwards to anyone else?