I hate getting sick. It’s something that’s
both inevitable, and for me, seemingly intolerable. It’s one thing to
feel weak or helpless, and another to be thrust into a pool that drowns
you in thoughts and feelings about how weak and helpless you are. It’s
realizing how little certain thoughts matter to me or how willing I am
to start negotiating the terms of my surrender. Something like a sore
throat is the nagging cat scratching at every swallow, erasing the
pleasure of taste. A head pounding says sit, stand, or lay down, it’s no
matter it will pull on the muscles around your brain and eyes until you
can’t see or think.
In truth, it’s hard for me to piece together
what to make of my “thoughts” when I’m severely ill. It’s one long
dream-like state of delirious pain, reacting to the chills or sweating
per my body aches and heaves. I really wanted help. At bottom, just
someone to like bear witness that I wasn’t over or under reacting to
what was happening. You don’t really know how bad you have it, and
sometimes until it’s too late to do anything. Every scowl and laughable
question about, “Who dies from the flu?” becomes less funny. Not that I
have more evidence than not to suggest I was about to die, but the
question rings louder the more isolated and without the necessary
resources you are.
Sickness is memorable for
me. I was thinking about what makes something memorable, and the
severity of the change in my disposition certainly counts. I know the
“differentness” of not eating for several days at a time. I know how
foreign it feels to not be able to put two thoughts together for longer
than snapshots of time. I know how empty and hopeless and desperate I am
to just black out until it’s all over. The physical nature of it sucks
enough, but the mental is what elevates it to the next level. Who am I
when nothing matters but the writhing and rocking of my legs or emptying
my body of every last drop of bile? Where do you want to go but down
when you can’t see or hold yourself up straight?
And then how do
we bother to understand or share sickness? In truth, I don’t get sick
often beyond annoying colds or tension headaches. The big ones stand out
for their ability to completely incapacitate save a fledgling ability
to drag myself to the bathroom. Our first instinct is to offer “help”
and also simultaneously be a little suspicious, no? How sick is sick?
Too sick to work? How do you have to sell and explain yourself so
you’re not punished on top of being sick for not living up to your
responsibilities? How desperate and persuasive do you have to be to be
accepted back into the ranks after being such a burden to your cohort or
family? I think this is a fairly unique American instinct.
In
any event, even while I consider myself on a path to be able to squirrel
away the resources to be able to account for my inevitable sickness,
universal healthcare or not, there’s still all the time in between.
There’s still the injuries I’m begging for and car accidents don’t stop
just because you had one recently. The same afternoon I got a hole dug
for a pool, I went from perfectly healthy, to exploding in a few hours.
Which aspect of my day will feel the most memorable? The excitement at
the prospect of a future swim spot, or the drama and pain? I think
they’ll be about equal. I think they’ll be equal because of the irony
underlying how life works. You have to work and affirm and overcome to
match the default pain and suffering that comes with existing at all.
That’s what makes it bearable and makes you want to keep living when
you’ve lost all direction and hope.
When I started to feel like
my shit was coming back together, figuratively and literally, I wanted
to get the laundry done, get my car dropped off to be worked on, and
compile the medicine I’d hopefully have on hand in case the next
disaster strikes. Whatever hell you’re experiencing doesn’t have to be
the end of the story or definitive in any way beyond how it’s made you
better prepared or appreciative of the health or security you’re
currently enjoying. For as often as life seems it’s trying to humble me
lately, I keep insisting I couldn’t really be sitting any prettier than
if I were able to layabout and arbitrarily invest unlimited time and
money.
I guess there’s also the sense that say I did randomly
die, it would have been on the day I moved forward with another thing I
said I wanted to do, have a pool, and I’ll be dammed if there isn’t a
gaping hole in the ground not 30 feet from me. I need shows of good
faith from myself as much or moreso than I do from others. You can’t say
I’m not trying, even if it looks less prepared or pretty than you
imagine the process should take. If all I know how to do is move in the
world one expenditure at a time (given the frivolity of the hearts and
minds approach), well, feel free to stop in and stare at the latest
attraction.
I still don’t feel 100%. I don’t feel “bad,” but I
feel like modest effort beyond basic ambling from one place to the next
is going to provoke the kind of huffing carrying my laundry yesterday
did. My mouth hasn’t returned to normal; it’s got that dry opaque
“medicine feel” like it’s been hollowed out and numb waiting for
permission to be a thing my brain can ignore until it’s been bitten. My
day is flirting with feeling like a “waste,” which again testifies to
how suspiciously I/we might think about recuperating and rest. I’m
hoping any remote insight or subconscious shift that might’ve taken
place manifests over the next few weeks. It was literally impossible to
string together thoughts that weren’t basic survival/cleanliness
instincts, but I distinctly remember how little a shit I gave about
topics that did pass through, if not what those topics were explicitly.
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