the state that I am in

Nov 06, 2007 12:03

I have given up trying to work out if these stupid exhausted days are fallout from glandular fever, side effects of the endless moebius sinus infection, or if somewhere some bastard has a little extemp-shaped voodoo doll on a treadmill and is making it run incessantly by poking it with electric cattle prods. Either way, the results are unpleasant. I wake up from nine hours of heavy sleep feeling as though I haven't slept at all. My eyelids are heavy. There's a sort of lead weight under my sternum that is slowing all my movements down to half speed with double effort. Enunciation is difficult: unless I concentrate ferociously, my words slur as though it's 4am after a deadline crisis, or I'm slightly drunk. Sid the Sinus Headache1 is drifting around my forehead in a sort of handyman-contractor preliminary way, surveying the territory and whistling while he plans where to place the iron spikes. My glands hurt and my chin feels enormous. I'm queasy.

The worst effects, though, are perceptual. The world goes extra-sharp and distinct, as though everything has particularly hard edges2. Walking is truly weird: I feel as though the things around me have a sort of teflon surface that repels me slightly on an ongoing basis. My feet never quite touch the ground, and something held in my hands is about two miles away and not entirely in my control. The repulsion feel is useful, since at the same time as never quite making contact, everything is very slowly falling towards me. The whole shebang tends to make me stop at random intervals on staircases or propped up against walls and mutter to myself until things settle, while spooked students give me a wide berth.

It occurs to me that one of the reasons (apart from control-freakishness, law-abidingness and basic cowardice) I have never done drugs is my sneaky suspicion that they'll never weird the world quite as well as the inside of my own head does.

This is the state in which I now need to mark 93 exam scripts and about 10 actual essays before tomorrow, which will teach me to leave it until the last minute because I haven't been feeling well. Remember: you can always feel worse.

1 Mature reflection suggests that I named him by subliminal association with Sid Vicious.

2 This is an effect I associate with ending a cross-country run, back in my schooldays when I used to do such things: the stages are (a) everything goes sharp, (b) whites go dazzlingly bright, (c) sound becomes muffled and distant and (d) I fall over.

bodysheisscratched

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