Experience - Emotional Chastity - Week 1

            I didn’t actually do this one.  I started to, I tried to, but I couldn’t.  And ultimately I’ve just decided I’m not going to.  I won’t go into the reasons why here, beyond the fact that I’m not willing to post stuff about my family.  Yes, this is ‘anonymous,’ but in the information age NOTHING is genuinely anonymous.  Not really.  I agreed to this experiment, myself.  Not them.  I will, however, describe what exactly DID happen when I initially attempted this task.

            This first week I was sicker than I can ever remember being, or at least for the longest duration of time I can ever remember it taking for me to get better.  I was literally in bed from 4pm Tuesday evening until about 10-11 am Thursday morning, and then fluctuated between feeling like I was getting better, and feeling like I was getting worse until I went to see the doctor around the start of this (the second) week.  I finally got some antibiotics to take care of the sinusitis aspect, a condition left over from the Flu he felt I had initially been suffering.  I didn’t start I genuinely feel truly better until the around Tuesday of the second week.

            Of course, about this time is when one of our cats (my roommate and I have a pair of cats, Buff and Blacky), Buff decided he needed to develop crystals in his urethra.  But that’s neither here, nor there, just another stressor thrown at me so far in this New Year.  Side note:  He seems to be doing fine now, yay!

            Anyway, before I went in to the doctor I actually called my father.  I had every intention of at least attempting this assignment, but when he got on the phone we just started talking about how I was sick.  He was concerned by the fact I was STILL sick, and we proceeded to have a fairly long conversation about my condition.  It was refreshing, and I didn’t want to ruin it by hashing things out right then and there.  I felt it would be tacky and inappropriate at the time.  So I chose to just let the conversation be what it was, rather than try and force it into something I thought it should be.  A decision I don’t regret.

            I realized pretty immediately afterwards that making this part of my project, dragging my family in to this without their consent or knowledge wasn’t something I was comfortable with.  And even if…when I do eventually have that conversation, it will be on my terms, and not open for public consumption.