I love it when I\u2019m sick.\u00a0 Flu, cold, sinus infection, whatever.\u00a0 It\u2019s great.\u00a0 Every year, I look forward to the time off from work, batting around the apartment in my boxers and feeling sorry for myself.<\/p>\n
\nLiving alone makes it even better.\u00a0 They\u2019re wrong about misery.\u00a0 It does not love company.\u00a0 At least, not the sort of company you get when living with someone.\u00a0 It loves the company the internet provides \u2013 people far away who do not always need a reply.<\/p>\n
I spent last week battling a particularly rough summer cold.\u00a0 Coughing, aching, fever, and my head stuffed full of colorful mucus \u2013 all pretty greens and yellows with a little red thrown in for flavor.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m still a little off.\u00a0 My head is still clogged up, and I\u2019m exhausted.\u00a0 In the last six days, I\u2019ve had about 11 hours of sleep thanks to the coughing, the fever, or that too tired to sleep early AM malaise.\u00a0 It\u2019s those early hours where being sick is really fun.\u00a0 Sitting up in the silence of those small hours, coughing and blowing death out of my nose, and just watching the sleeping world.\u00a0 Strange things happen at 3am.\u00a0 Police cars glide by, giving that sense of protection.\u00a0 Every regular car seems out of place, assumed guilt heaped on the driver.\u00a0 Why are you out so late?\u00a0 Dumping a body?\u00a0 Coming home from a crime?\u00a0 The occasional tow truck is a bizarre creature \u2013 a rumbling beast as out of place in that world as a dinosaur.<\/p>\n
Even with all that, you still feel very alone at 3am.<\/p>\n
Fevers are fun.\u00a0 I had a steady 104 back in March for two days and, eventually, came to seriously believe that I was part of Stargate Command.\u00a0 This time around, I only hit 102 last Thursday, when it finally broke.\u00a0 Whenever my fevers break, I tend to wake up flailing and screaming.\u00a0 Been doing that since I was a child\u2026 Don\u2019t know why.\u00a0 Maybe everyone does that?<\/p>\n
I take lots of time off when I\u2019m sick, because, deep down, I do respect my fellow commuters.\u00a0 I hate being that sick guy on the bus or train.\u00a0 The guy who\u2019s always coughing and blowing his nose.\u00a0 There\u2019s always a sick guy, no matter the time of year.\u00a0 I just think it\u2019s the rudest thing \u2013 you should be quarantined, not sitting in a poorly ventilated train car with the common people.\u00a0 Give us what you have and it\u2019ll spread like a wildfire.\u00a0 The plebes will die first, then the oligarchs will follow\u2026because we\u2019re the ones plunging out their toilets and changing their beds, hacking and shivering from fever the whole time.<\/p>\n
I like the flu, especially.\u00a0 A day of being really sick and puking, then a day of recovery.\u00a0 It almost feels like some ritual, some ancient tradition.\u00a0 There is a religious quality to throwing up.\u00a0 The sweat-soaked, shaking relief when you\u2019re finished.\u00a0 Even better to do it into a trashcan from the side of the bed.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not that I want to be sick, or that I try to catch a cold, or want to prolong any illness.\u00a0 But I do enjoy taking a break from it all.\u00a0 Maybe that\u2019s what I\u2019m really in love with \u2013 removing myself from the world.\u00a0 On my own, it\u2019s hard to do.\u00a0 Even on vacation, I have to check my email.\u00a0 But when sick, it just doesn\u2019t matter.\u00a0 Don\u2019t check the news, don\u2019t talk to anyone, turn the phone off, and fuck the world.\u00a0 Set up a sick chair in front of the computer and watch an entire season of some low budget sci-fi show, fading in and out of reality and half sleep.\u00a0 All sense of time lost \u2013 daytime and nighttime is the only clock.\u00a0 Who cares what day it is, or what\u2019s happening.\u00a0 It\u2019s the 3am people who worry me.\u00a0 The shadows moving along the side of a building, the insomniac dog walkers, the cops looking for trouble, and everyone else right behind them.\u00a0 The tow truck that\u2019s never towing a car.\u00a0 What the hell is happening in that world?\u00a0 The world I only see because I\u2019m too sick to live, and I really do feel like an intruder when I\u2019m watching it.<\/p>\n
It all changes at 4am.\u00a0 That\u2019s when the first wage slaves start to leave and the world stirs.\u00a0 And when I begin to feel like it\u2019s too late to try and sleep again, so I just retreat to my bedroom and puke, cough, or blow out my life before a few snatched hours of sleep, waking when the sun hits me shortly after.<\/p>\n
Back to work today after four days of that and I can\u2019t think straight\u2026which means I shouldn\u2019t be posting long rants.\u00a0 The older I get, the more I realize that I really do want to be a shut in.\u00a0 Though, of course, I want to be a healthy shut in!\u00a0 But I want to just stay in my apartment forever and do nothing.\u00a0 Set my alarm for 3am every night and go sit on the balcony and take notes.\u00a0 Stop shaving and never dress above jeans and a t-shirt.\u00a0 Go days without saying a word\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I love it when I\u2019m sick.\u00a0 Flu, cold, sinus infection, whatever.\u00a0 It\u2019s great.\u00a0 Every year, I look forward to the time off from work, batting around the apartment in my boxers and feeling sorry for myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[175],"class_list":["post-213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","tag-illness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=213"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1063,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions\/1063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}