Missing You

Paper-writing season is upon us.
I think my bed misses me.
I know I miss it.

Reasons why being sick is worse when you live by yourself

I just spent 60 hours in bed because I was rugby tackled by the flu. Today I managed to drag myself out of bed, shower, put on clothes and go to the drug store. Just so you know, the drug store is basically right outside my door. It takes about 30 seconds to get there. That's how sick I was. I couldn't imagine making a 30 second walk to get medicine. Being sick isn't fun at the best of times, but it's so much worse when you live by yourself. See, when I'm at home, I have my parents. My mom is awesome at taking care of me when I'm sick. She makes sure I do things like drink water. And my dad is always willing to run out to get me medicine or food. And for the past 4 years I've been living with roommates who were absolute god-sends when I got sick. They would write me little get well notes, make me soup and tea, and ignore the fact that I was supposed to be quarantined in order to come read me Dr. Seuss. I missed that a lot. Instead, I was the one who had to get any food or water I needed. I had to make sure I actually hydrated myself. I didn't have anyone to send on a drugstore run, so I just suffered without medicine. It was not fun. I'm still nowhere near 100% but the fact that I showered and got dressed is a good sign. Baby steps, people, baby steps.

In Search of Rest

Five Breaks
Margaret Avison

        I

Top-spun, swiftly
paid out,
you flung me, dancing, humming:
      'Joy it is
      to ride the day,
      lest that one toy with
      God's play.'
The stranger motif here
stunned my now dizzying ear,
and stilled, I lay
toppled and listening.


       II

No one at slack but
jerking guy-ropes or (Look out!)
lash-tackle will
entangle.
Rope-burned, wind-sifted,
praising the Stranger courage and
barrenlands beauty,
strong in your buffeting, I
stood, speed-blind, among
your synchronizing glories.


       III

O, then, a careful face
shone bare. In your
held breath, new pinpointed - 
were they besiegers' eye-prongs circling
as though a City's famine could be succulence?
I swellingly knew
the aliens, close: all the
my-mind versions of your glory
(like seeing death life, as your
memoranda left on the blotter
for my day's work; like 
chronologies - of 'mercies' - these,
these, as if exacted; like
feeling the flesh as tomb
stoned by its own
funereal pieties,
braced for rotting geologies of endurance - 
and after that for grubbing,
engine-heat, the
firebird cycle...)


       IV

Valentine cards
in the February lace of daylight
through window and doorway glass:
store; children; love; a lakeblue sudsbright
eleven o'clock outdoors, seen too
by the scorched eyes of grief,
the gravelled eyes of
utter disappointment, these
zero in the 
arrowing sunburst, cone-tip, the
transfixing life.


       V

Your tireless rise, your daybreak,
O, here, touch home.


I wrote not long ago about how I haven't been sleeping well. I have discovered one thing that helps though: poetry. If I crawl into bed with a book of poetry and delve into it, just allowing myself to soak in it, I can actually feel myself physically relax. Some of the tension drains from my shoulders, my thoughts stop spinning in obsessive, downward spirals, I breathe a little bit deeper and, after a while, I can actually sleep. Sadly this does nothing for the length of my sleep since I have to stay up to do the reading, but it has helped the quality of my sleep. And more than that, it is helping me feel sane. A small miracle if you ask me.

The Effort of Living

I don't know if you've ever felt like that. That you wanted to sleep for a thousand years. Or just not exist. Or just not be aware that you do exist. Or something like that. I think wanting that is very morbid, but I want it when I get like this. That's why I’m trying not to think. I just want it all to stop spinning. -- The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Some days when my alarm goes off getting out of bed and facing the day just seems like too much effort. Today was one of those days. It's not as if the day I had in front of me was awful (homework, choir rehearsal and work), but it was just blah. And Monday had really knocked the wind out of me. The morning was fine, but then sometime around noon Monday decided to slap me across the face. I burned the dinner I was trying to make to take to work, I dropped everything I touched for the span of about two hours. I acquired a raging headache. Miraculously work was somehow good, but once I got back and was trying to get some more reading done before bed I was overwhelmed with a sense of panic about graduation and my impending future. Of course this panic wouldn't listen to a voice of reason, nor would it kindly go away when I wanted to sleep, so I didn't sleep all that well. All of this meant that when my alarm went off this morning the last thing I wanted to do was put in the effort it would take to face the world. And all day I've been wishing I was back in bed. It's taking a lot of effort for me to simply interact with other people. I am forcing myself to do so in small amounts though because it is the best way I know of to keep myself sane. I'm starting to understand why people simply disappear sometimes though. The idea of going off the grid is incredibly appealing right now.