"To send light into the darkness of men's hearts – such is the duty of the artist." — Robert Schumann
Sometimes I start writing posts, only to end up discovering them later in my draft folder. Some of them, having lost their urgency, I discard. Others I keep in the draft folder until I decide what to do with them. And then some, like this one, would’ve been more timely when initially written, but are still worth unleashing on the world, even if it veers wildly from my initial purpose of the post, which was about being stuck inside my room with COVID for two weeks.
I originally wrote this in December 2022, so it should be read as if I published it then. Except for the footnotes, which are present day additions.
I avoided it for over two years. At one point, I thought I might be an anomaly — one of the few who wouldn’t get COVID. I hadn’t gotten it when my fiancee 1 got it during the summer (and almost all the managers at my work), and I live with her. And yet, while I’d gotten the bivalent booster in October, here I was on a Monday night in December testing for COVID and getting a negative result, right when my symptoms began, and then thinking it might still be COVID on Thursday and testing again, only for the test streak to appear immediately, even before the control streak did (my fiancee, who tested after me, tested negative).
I knew I had something bad, so I’d been masking at home since either Monday night or Tuesday, but now I went into quarantine, even though the worst of the virus was probably over by the time I tested positive for it (minus the sore throat — I’ve had strep throat, and just as the first few days felt like a bad flu, this felt like a bad case of strep throat, only worse than I’ve ever had).
Even so, those first few days were rough. I would wake when my body felt like it and fall asleep when it felt like it. I’d text my fiancee when I needed to use the bathroom, and would spray Lysol in the bathroom as I left and as I headed back into the bedroom. Even now, I only take off my double mask when I’m in my room with the door closed, and despite the temperature outside, have the slider door open slightly and the purifier running at all times of day (and in the rest of the house, my fiancee has the ceiling fan running and the windows open whenever possible). During the day, she drops off trays of food in front of my door for meals, much as I had done when she was sick.
Today I woke up in a sweat and knew the worst of it was over. Besides the awful sore throat, fatigue, and flu-like symptoms, I also had a fever the first couple of days.2
Tomorrow night will be five days since symptoms began,3 and while the CDC says I can be out and about after 5 days of symptoms, so long as I mask (though I should avoid at-risk populations for 11 days, if what I heard from my doctor was correct), in the real world, no one is going to want you at work unless your result is negative.4 I’m lucky in that 3/5 of my job is at a desk,5 so those portions I can do at home, though some of the office work can only be done at my place of business. What this means is that, once I blow through the rest of my sick hours (only allowed 40 hours a year, due to city policy) and vacation time (also capped at 40 hours a year), I’ll be losing money due to an illness that, instead of engendering calls for a universal wage, free healthcare, and other measures that grew out of our empathy for others, scared those selfish brats in power once people started asserting themselves.
I wrote here about things we could do to make our world better (though I should’ve included Defund the Police, or find a better solution to crime than police, or at least hold them to a higher (not lower) standard of accountability, because otherwise we get this happening. And yes, that spike in the graph should REALLY make us think about giving more money and less oversight to these institutions). I’m still hopeful we can make these things happen, but we need to realize that the conditions preventing these things from happening are intentional decisions made by those in power to stay in power. And racism, sexism, and any other -ism helps achieve this goal. Billionaires aren’t going to save the world, but the conditions that create them, allow them to exist, and give them power, most certainly will destroy it.
As I alluded to in my last post, I got married this year. And one thing we decided to do was to have a first look photo, which is what it sounds like: a photo of the first time the groom sees the bride in her wedding dress (we also did a first look where my mom first sees me in my suit, but that’s not the focus of this post).
On the day of our wedding, my bride-to-be left in the morning to get dressed with her bridesmaids at her parents’ house, and I left about an hour later to get dressed with my best man and one of my other groomsmen (and his bride-to-be). So, by the time I saw her again, several hours had passed. She’d also made a mistake and thought she had to be at the venue at 2pm for photos, when that was when the decor et al needed to be dropped off (we were actually supposed to be there at 1). I just thought she was being fashionably late, and she thought she was on-time. While we waited, we did the aforementioned first look with my mom and then my photographer went off to take random photos. As it got closer to when my now-wife would arrive, I hid myself in the back room of the venue until I was led out by the photographer to stand and look away while she brought the bride in position.
Now, I’ve always heard it said that the most beautiful bride a groom sees is the one he’s marrying. I always thought that was something the groom had to say, as objectively, other people could be prettier (not more attractive, since that is a different metric).
But that was before I got married.
When I was told I could turn around when I was ready, I was nervous. I knew I’d like the dress, as my wife’s family had all liked it when she went shopping with them, and her bridesmaids liked it when they saw it, but what if my reaction wasn’t strong enough? I can’t fake emotions, so whatever my reaction was would be spontaneous and genuine.
I needn’t have worried.
Yes, readers, she is the most beautiful bride I’ve seen, not just because she looked beautiful in her dress (she did), but BECAUSE I was marrying her. And in case that wasn’t enough, her dress and the rest of her ensemble reflected her personality so well – the personality I loved – that it highlighted all the reasons I love her and was marrying her. Not to mention how emotional she was in seeing me and my reaction, which made this public moment (with cameras) seem like a private one.
And that is why she will remain the most beautiful bride to me.
Dreams of Literary Grandeur 