too late
Days upon weeks upon months of lost sleep and manic energy have turned my body against me. It started with fatigue and a fever, then quickly morphed into inflammation everywhere: throat, lips, gums, ears, eyes. I never know what new pain I’m going to wake to these days. It has been two weeks and still I feel I have made no progress.
As I write this, I have a crushing pressure in the top left of my skull — the sort of pressure that feels like a toothache, the sort of pain that I in fact once went to a dentist for because I was sure my teeth were rotting out of my head. Instead, the dentist took an X-ray, looked me over, and said, “It’s not your teeth, it’s your sinuses.” What else could I expect him to do after that?
I was already seeing a specialist for my sinus flare-up, so even though the pain was enough to tear me from the desk in the middle of a workday, telling the girls sorry, I really need to do this, the pain is blinding — the only thing left to do was to wait.
But patience is a virtue I have yet to learn. And will I ever, in this lifetime? I am constantly surprised by how agonising it is to just sit and be still.
*
The doctor today looked at my swollen eye and told me it wasn’t that bad. Mild, his exact word was. Thank god, I thought, this can all be over soon. After all: he’s only seeing one presentation of my body’s protestations. He missed an inexplicable eruption of ulcers, canker sores, smarting lips so raw they were perpetually flushed red.
I am trying to manage my expectations. Regulate my emotions. I am torn between gratitude and raging betrayal every day — things could be worse, I remind myself (but couldn’t they be so much better too?). When I feel like I can barge through life without consequence — work, run, write, skip meals, not sleep, ferret out all the excess adrenaline, become a supercharged self — my body tends to pull a hard stop.
I know this. I have been through this. I often see it coming, and still I keep barrelling down the same path, making these mistakes over and over and over again. It’s not just the physical flare-ups that frustrate me, it’s the dissonance between my mind and a body I have so little control over. Last week I cried myself to sleep because I had woken with an exciting agenda of things to do, and out of nowhere I am sapped of energy, stripped of joy. In place, I lie in darkness, oppressed by fatigue. It is mere hours but it feels like the fog will never lift.
*
My body is falling apart but life trundles on. In the morning tomorrow, the girls arrive to celebrate a birthday. In the afternoon, there are deadlines I must meet. This is the rhythm of my days now: a desire to care about the little things, the major things, countered by a pit of hopelessness, exhaustion, physical hiccups, betrayal. Which will win out this time?
