goodish

At work Comrade R asks how I am. It’s a genuine enquiry, not rhetorical. On the basis that when I ask I like an honest answer, I always answer honesty, even when I know the asker couldn't care less how I really am. This practice unnerves check-out chicks, confuses colleagues.

Great satisfaction can be had by telling some bouncy thing who asks how your day has been that in fact it’s been crap. With an exclamation mark.

It’s too easy to go with stock answers like good, fit as a fiddle, not so good, so-so, sick as a dog: routine responses, clichéd, without nuance or subtlety, or without respect for a genuine enquiry. Some feelings demand a bit of clout. If I’m fan-fucking-tastic, I’m inclined to say so. But some days it’s hard to define just how one feels.

So this morning when Comrade R asks how I am, I go with good, then qualify it with, “…well, goodish.” I feel sort of drained and empty without contact with my good woman for nine days. I feel dazed and confused, despite hours of earnest inner conversation about how we managed to stuff up what seemed so good.

But I can’t say this to a colleague who has no idea what my personal situation is, or was. So goodish is what he gets. I think it means OK under the circumstances, or my body’s fine but my heart aches, or I’m here at work but I’d rather be elsewhere.

Comrade R isn’t sure what to make of goodish, prompts for more, isn’t getting any. A couple of hours later he draws a chair up near mine, solicitous, but he still not getting any.

I’m not moping, complaining, mean or silent. I whistle while I work, joke around, although not with the usual zest. I don’t much feel like writing. I’m going through the motions.

Rock on, sort of.