This fest I’ve been watching VEEP to keep
me sane. Odd choice you may think – but it’s basically an office of exhausted
people winding each other up and trying not to lose their minds as things all
move too quickly. It’s funny. There is no filter. It is exactly like working
festivals back to back.
I have just watched 'Midterm' – the episode
where Amy gets a call on election night saying her dad has had a suspected
stoke. Her reaction is exactly the same as me when my kidney problems started
to get serious. She isn’t in the room – I wasn’t in the room. My head
constantly racing – when I wasn’t in pain I was managing my time so I could get
ahead of the next infection and be able to afford time off to be ill, when I was in pain,
I couldn’t work, sleeping and vomiting until tears came out as there was
nothing inside me but pain.
I got my diagnosis in October – that my
left kidney had likely never worked – and I would have to have it removed. An
operation yet to happen because I had already committed to a festival in Oz and
in the mean time I bought my first flat.
Writing it down kinda shows me how insane
it looks – I think when we find it hard to value ourselves, one – we find it
hard to work out what our value is to other people, and two, we lose
perspective with work and what’s required of us.
I have gone through two festivals
hopscotching illness. This Adelaide Fringe being no exception – I thought I
would be fine drinking much, much less, getting sleep, being maybe a little
more detached from my artists’ emotional ties to their work. I failed at one of
these only – I am always invested emotionally in the shows I work with and I do
hope that never changes. But still, the
first week of fringe I experienced stomach cramps so awful I couldn’t walk when
they struck, every time I got in a vehicle for a short journey I had to vomit;
I was unable to digest food so every time I ate it offered little energy and
increased the stomach cramps ten fold.
There’s a Robyn song – ‘Don’t fucking tell me what to do’ – which isn’t about being told what to do, it’s about how too
much is killing her. The song vibes with exhaustion and anger. Sometimes in
this last year my illness has manifested as ‘don’t fucking tell me what to do’
– whereas you know? I just don’t wanna kill myself. Like Amy – I want that
chance to ‘go see my dad in hospital’ –
I don’t want to feel guilty for having a few hours off. I want people to trust
me that I will get the job done regardless of how I am, and I want to be able
to own my imperfections. For Amy in VEEP – taking a colleague to hospital to
workshop a speech while she spends time with her dad is dark and very, very
funny. For me it was being told to get off my phone in the waiting room for thirty
minutes so I could discuss test results. I found the whole thing very, very
funny, but at the same time, being Miriam, is killing me.
