I am a naturally sickly person. We’ve never managed to figure out why, but my lungs have always been close to useless, my joints are creaky, my eyesight and hearing feel like they’re dawning on Helen Keller-esque, and my immune system is just deplorable. I’ve spent more time in doctors and in bed from sickness than I ever have in organized sports (I am told that there is no possible correlation there, either). I didn’t spend nearly a year in bed struggling for breath for nothing.
There, that’s grumpy exposition.
Throw myself into the petri dish that is college (or worse, college in the winter), and I’m practically helpless. I’ve been down with some kind of flu-like disease for going on two and a half weeks now; anyone who’s ever had flu knows that you’re effectively in some kind of vegetative state for the duration. A terrible position for a college student in her first three weeks back at school!! Not only am I slowly losing my mind from being kept indoors, but I’m falling behind in classes. Motivation is running sluggishly. Supplies dwindling. Morale low.
Despite the fact that I have spent a great deal of my life sick, the Act of Being Sick always throws me for a loop. I’ve often imagined waking up one day and finding out I have something truly dreadful (for awhile, we all thought I did) and I’d have to summon up all my strength and persevere like you hear so many people doing. Strong individuals who won’t back down, who strive to get better and do better. And while I can’t even begin to imagine comparing being constantly under the weather with little things like the flu (however unhappy a 103-degree fever might be) with something drastic like cancer, sometimes I feel like the juggling act of school and jobs and the social life that I’m finally coming into, that I feel, sometimes, that I could not live without, AND sickness…it all feels like too much.
When I get behind in life, I feel like I’m being sucked into this vortex of pained stomachaches and looming or missed deadlines and readings I’ll positively drown in, with little motivation to jump out of it and do something. I wasn’t like this all the time, lazy, afraid…
Okay, maybe I have. Since high school, at least.
But the difference between high school and now is that, back then, I had that journal I’ve talked about to read back on and realize what an idiot I was being. This past week and a half, I’ve just sat in bed, or on the futon, feeling useless and idiotic but unable to move on, put the computer down, and pick up a book for anything better than leisurely reading.
That needs to change. It’s going to change.
We’re nearing the end of January; I’ve been 22 for three weeks now, nearly, yet it seems ages and ages ago. I’ve got to get back on the (metaphorical) horse. They say half of recovery is admitting you have a problem; I’m admitting it to the entire internet. That’s got to stand for something…at least one foot on the (metaphorical) saddle.
Tylenol, history reading, and a frenzied attempt to catch up in Greek one day…let’s do this thing.
