A Bad Judgment
I was off sick yesterday.
I had a terrible headache Thursday evening. I took a panadol around midnight. I was half asleep when I received a text from someone whose best suits did not include counting the time difference between Australia and Indonesia. The text was negligible but I couldn’t get back to sleep. I found myself smoking a cigarette at 4 in the morning in the living room. Then the next thing I knew I was lying on my bed, facing the ceiling, wide awake. I looked at the clock and it was a quarter to nine. My head was pounding even stronger when I called my assistant to let her know that I wouldn’t be coming to the office.
After I hung up, I laid on my bed again. The sunshine went through the blinds in my bedroom so I put a pillow on my face. Soon enough, my breathing was getting steadier. I was slowly pulled into unconsciousness.
Then my fucking mobile rang off.
My assistant quickly apologised when she heard me saying hello groggily. She urgently needed our project’s peer-review file and knew that our boss kept it but he was away (to Australia and New Zealand for a holiday!!!), and she wondered whether I had it or not. I heard myself telling her that I’d look it up in my files and email it as soon as I found it. She said thanks and wished me a good rest.
I put my mobile on the bed. I looked at the clock and was pretty shocked when I realised it had been more than two hours since I rang my assistant to let her know that I was ill.
I guess time is a weird concept when your head is fucked up.
I dragged myself out of the bedroom, switched the laptop on, looked for the bleeding file and emailed it. I found trying to sleep was just too much work so I decided to make some coffee. I switched the electric kettle on and realised that it got broken the night before. I put a kettle on the stove, went to the bathroom and gave myself a good splash of cold water.
The rest of the day I spent in my living room, checking and replying work-related emails, trying not to get OD’d on paracetamol, watching a Korean horror only to realise midway through that I’d already seen it, listening to my ringing mobiles but I didn’t take any calls and instead stuffed the poor gadgets under the pillows in my bedroom.
Fuck. I thought I was off sick?
I went to sit on the carpet in the living room with my back propped by a big green cushion. I gave my forehead a massage, trying to relieve the headache.
Then I heard myself hum.
When clouds go rolling by
They roll away and leave the sky
Where is the land behind the eye
People cannot see
Where can you see
Where do the stars go
Where is the crescent moon
They must be somewhere in the sunny afternoon
It was an old song I used to really love.
I looked it up on Limewire.
I found it in no time and immediately uploaded it to my iPod.
I switched the laptop off, plugged the earphones in.
I turned into an autistic dancer.
Fast-forward to today.
This morning when I woke up with a slightly lighter 100-kilos head, I wanted to skip breakfast again but there was a report that I couldn’t possibly miss to submit. So I went to the net shop for uploading big megabyte, I barely could lift my head up and I was seeing the room double.
Now it’s almost 3 past 30 o’clock in the afternoon.
I’m in work station with no private room.
I’m listening to myself hum.
Cats and rabbits
Would reside in fancy little houses
And be dressed in shoes and hats and trouses
In a world of my own
All the flowers
Would have very extra special powers
They would sit and talk to me for hours
When I’m lonely in a world of my own
I feel like I’m high on something.
It’s the songs I hummed…
It’s the headache I suffer from…
Maybe mixing two panadols and a ponstan with a glass of supradyn was not a good idea.
