When you have an endless layover at the airport, or you’re sitting in a hospital bedside someone who is sick, the feeling of the doing of it, that misplacement, that crouching down in suspended time may thrust you into a different place of consciousness. It is exhausting this habitation of a false space, a reality that is not fully your own. But then, at some point, you pass from feeling misplaced to a sort of pervasive numbness as though you have been shifted over ever so slightly and another body not quite your own has taken your place.
I find myself sitting uncomfortably beside this person who is living my life for me for I have been too ill for too long. Extended illness becomes forever I will always be sick because I have always been sick there is nothing but this slogging through the hours there has never been a moment when I was well everything in the house is entering my body all the ordinary objects and comforts have become knaves, thieving their way up and down the length of my brain, my fingers, my hands have forgotten their places. I am thawing but the familiarity of home has been stripped away is this my kitchen? Is this my bedroom my chair my bedside table? Are all my clothes monochromatic are all my thoughts flattened out pressed breathless between the leaves of the multitude of books surrounding me?
It is not the Covid of which I speak. It is the Covid which followed close on the heels of the other virus which followed five months after the virus that sent James to the hospital and us into a gnawing hacking nagging illness. Everything has run together. The worry over James the worry over James the worry and guilt over James. And he is still losing weight. And no one can be found at the gym no not us. And the salty food is back. If you photographed us we would be time-lapsed we would be so, so tired tired downward-facing turned away from the sun.
Another year of loss. We had no Thanksgiving. We had no family Christmas. We are having no New Year’s no hoppin’ John no collards no sop. This morning I went back to the doctor. I have, perhaps, a rip-roaring case of Thrush. They are growing a couple of cultures to see what’s going on. I probably have strep but we dare not treat with antibiotics. Salty gargles. Saline up the nose. (Yeast also in the more common area and I just completed treatment!! from the previous round of antibiotics) and so that treatment as well boo all hollow boo this gig is not interesting this gig is humbug these poor people are exhausted.
YAY! I have now written out my blahblahblahblah. It is helpful to reflect, to dig down my heels in the creekbank.
This year I will use a planner by the gods own children I will I will use a wall calendar and a fridge calendar and I will schedule things. This is not an effort to “get more done” or to “reach my goals.” Rather this is, will be I hope a way to keep myself from doing TOO much, i.e. going downstairs to find a screwdriver to fix something upstairs and ending up downstairs cleaning and reorganizing the Room and vacuuming and moping all over and also cooking soup and a casserole.
This is how I live my life—spur of the moment, when the mood strikes, when I’m in the middle of it. But this, I realize, is a soul-drainer, a time-robber. I intend to change things. And I am going to. This is not a New Year’s resolution, this is a needed thing.
Just think how much time I have wasted refusing to follow recipes, or just stick to my own method of making soup. There is this incredibly stubborn person inside me who is always want to tweak things, just a little bit, even my morning COFFEE! It is perverse and perhaps has to do with the quest for perfection–if this is good THIS could be so much better!
Bah. Nothing is perfect and there’s no chance that it will become so. And if it DID become so I’d have to constantly work to make it stay perfect. Chasing my own tail. And then biting it.
No, I have reached maximum threshold.
And I am done.
~r.
