So Long Superbug, And Thanks For The Existential Crisis

For the last two weeks, I have been near death. Not even kidding. That superbug that has been plaguing the entire Northeast United States has washed through my house in a matter of days. I came home from work with a slight cough and a tightness in the chest consistent with bronchitis and when I woke up the next morning, I couldn’t move.

That superbug that has been plaguing the entire Northeast United States has washed through my house in a matter of days. I came home from work with a slight cough and a tightness in the chest consistent with bronchitis and when I woke up the next morning, I couldn’t move.

As in, “holy shit am I legitimately dying?” I’ve had the flu a few times but what in the actual f**k?” My wife nursed me until I could go back to work and then she caught it, then my daughter caught it.

And then we were all miserable.

Now, we’re all on the mend with a persistent cough that just won’t seem to go away. But, on the upside, we’ve shotgunned a few seasons of Supernatural, the entire Star Wars saga (including the prequels and episode 7), and even started playing a video game as a family. (Slender: the Arrival, by the way, play this in the daylight. Don’t watch it at night … just a suggestion, it’s a visceral experience that is still kind of messing with me. My wife and daughter are avid horror movie buffs. I’m a wuss when it comes to those kinds of movies.)

I’ve actually had a few emails from readers who hadn’t heard from me, either on my blog or my column here. Yes, I am alive. I haven’t been writing, but I have been thinking. I’ve had time to think, if nothing else. But, thank you for the concern. I am alive and back to writing.

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You tend to run into existential crises when you’ve nothing to do for 2 weeks but count the ceiling tiles. When you can’t do anything, even a desk lamp can present your psyche with some deep problems.

I wish I could find something that made me think that life wasn’t just this random cause and effect cluster that ultimately means nothing to itself. But, I can’t. I literally can’t. The only thing I can find are the reasons to keep going that make me happy.

My wife, my daughter, writing, video games, my obsessions, the things that make me, me.

The problem is that it’s simply not enough. I’m in a weird place because I can easily accept that there is nothing else, this is it, to quote Rick and Morty (another shotgunned series, still waiting for season 3), “Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody’s gonna die. Come watch TV.” I can casually accept this. But, there is a part of me that rebels. The part that refuses to accept these limitations because I’m the only thing in this world that I am absolutely conscious of.

When I was lying down, my wife forwarded this article to me,”10 Mind-Blowing Theories About The Universe and Reality”  My wife clearly has no idea how my brain works because this was the absolute worst thing she could possibly send her deeply-thinking husband when he has nothing to distract him from his own thoughts, except possibly divorce and custody papers. I don’t imagine I’d take that too well, either.

Every single one of the theories presented there were like marathons for an already delirious and tired mind.

Small tangent, speaking of delirious… The first night I officially had the bug, I ran a 104 fever and was saying random shit. “Saying” was a misnomer. I was yelling at 3:00 a.m. to people who weren’t there. ** Warning! Please NOTE I do NOT treat people I work with this way, but at one point I sat up and said, “Which one of you ginger f**ks is running this shit show? I need a hot fry to 76 and I need it f**king NOW, not in 10 minutes when you pull your hands off your balls, NOW.”

Then I passed out and went back to sleep, cuddling my frightened wife. I swear I don’t treat my cook staff like that, nor have I ever thought something like that. The only reason I can recall this verbatim is that my wife had been running a camera in our house, because she thinks there is a ghost in the house or something. To top it all off, my 5-year-old daughter comes in and says, “Papa stop yelling! I sleeping.” Then slams the door.

My wife grabs her pillow, blanket and leaves the room.

This is my life. And according to the feed, we don’t have a ghost in the house. We do, however, have an asshole infestation in the house.

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As I normally do when I’m presented with some kind of problem, I run to Wikipedia and research whatever it is. At least that’s how it starts. You know how the Wiki-surfing game is played. You begin at 8:00 p.m., trying to find out about one specific thing, then you click on another article and another, and before you know it it’s 3:00 a.m., and you’re researching the design schematics of the late Soviet fission reactors that caused the Chernobyl incident. At least, that’s what happens to me. Your results may vary.

One of the final articles I read before I tapped out was Ultimate Fate of the Universe. When I came to the section about the Heat Death of the universe, I could take no more. That was it, nothing could survive this, everything that humanity or any other advanced civilization was but putty in the hands of a sadistically precise universe doomed to death by its very entropic existence.

I still haven’t recovered. I don’t think I ever will. Again, I can accept it, but a part of me rebels. There has to be some meaning to it all.

And please don’t give me the “God” hypothesis. That explains less than nothing to me. That may be fine for some, but it literally means nothing to me. The problem I have now is that I can’t believe in anything that makes life worth living. If indeed we’re living in a simulated world, or if any of the theories are true, then I can’t even believe my own senses and nothing is real in the sense that everything is real. My life and sentience has been downgraded to one big Plato’s Cave Allegory. The shadows on the wall are all I know. The only difference is that I suppose I want more, though I know “more” doesn’t exist.

And to think it all started with a fevered mind, an article on the internet and a lack of mobility.
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Photo Credit: Getty Images

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