Weird.
I hate getting sick more because it demoralizes me than anything else.
Something about those long hours sitting in bed too tired to read or speak, but wide awake, thinking, and alone.
I'll be clear: I don't always want people around when I'm sick. I like to be left alone, especially if I'm too tired or ill to make conversation, or too irritable to bear the presence of another human. It's not the loneliness that makes me want to chew my foot off. I'm fine being alone, as long as I have enough energy to keep myself entertained. It's just the hours and hours of being too tired to do anything but sit and think about the past that get to me.
My nostalgia-o-meter is popping like a Geiger counter. I can't move two feet without tripping over some happy memory I'd rather not revisit.
About the only time my mother showed me unvarnished affection was when I was ill; perhaps because I had a close call with scarlet fever as a child, she was more gentle than usual whenever something was actually wrong with me.
Because of that, whenever I'm sick, especially sick enough to, god forbid, need someone to tend to me, I think about all the nice things about her. I think about how she used to make up stories because I'd read all my books a million times. I remember how we'd play make-believe. I remember how she'd make me ice chips or put ice in my soup; how she'd let me eat grape popsicles for dinner, and drink Dimetapp right out of the bottle like a mini-wino. Most of all, I remember how she'd sit on the bed and rub my legs and squeeze my feet until I fell asleep. To this day when I am dozing off, I rub one foot back and forth against the sheet when I am comfortable - something I don't know if my bedmate has ever noticed, so I don't think I have ever explained.
Whatever our dysfunctions, and whether or not I strictly speaking need her now, she was my mother. Perhaps it is because we had so many conflicts that it's hard, now, not to miss her, because I'm also still missing the places where she ought to have been when I was younger.
The weird thing is that I have a persistent feeling that I'd miss that part of her just as much if she were still here. There were times when the space between us seemed greater than it does even now that she's gone. Times when we were not friends. Because we parted well, I will never feel as far from her as I felt when we were not talking, as opposed to just unable to talk. I will always feel this close to her, and now neither one of us can ever say something stupid to fuck it up.
How strange. Always this close, and always this far.
Something about those long hours sitting in bed too tired to read or speak, but wide awake, thinking, and alone.
I'll be clear: I don't always want people around when I'm sick. I like to be left alone, especially if I'm too tired or ill to make conversation, or too irritable to bear the presence of another human. It's not the loneliness that makes me want to chew my foot off. I'm fine being alone, as long as I have enough energy to keep myself entertained. It's just the hours and hours of being too tired to do anything but sit and think about the past that get to me.
My nostalgia-o-meter is popping like a Geiger counter. I can't move two feet without tripping over some happy memory I'd rather not revisit.
About the only time my mother showed me unvarnished affection was when I was ill; perhaps because I had a close call with scarlet fever as a child, she was more gentle than usual whenever something was actually wrong with me.
Because of that, whenever I'm sick, especially sick enough to, god forbid, need someone to tend to me, I think about all the nice things about her. I think about how she used to make up stories because I'd read all my books a million times. I remember how we'd play make-believe. I remember how she'd make me ice chips or put ice in my soup; how she'd let me eat grape popsicles for dinner, and drink Dimetapp right out of the bottle like a mini-wino. Most of all, I remember how she'd sit on the bed and rub my legs and squeeze my feet until I fell asleep. To this day when I am dozing off, I rub one foot back and forth against the sheet when I am comfortable - something I don't know if my bedmate has ever noticed, so I don't think I have ever explained.
Whatever our dysfunctions, and whether or not I strictly speaking need her now, she was my mother. Perhaps it is because we had so many conflicts that it's hard, now, not to miss her, because I'm also still missing the places where she ought to have been when I was younger.
The weird thing is that I have a persistent feeling that I'd miss that part of her just as much if she were still here. There were times when the space between us seemed greater than it does even now that she's gone. Times when we were not friends. Because we parted well, I will never feel as far from her as I felt when we were not talking, as opposed to just unable to talk. I will always feel this close to her, and now neither one of us can ever say something stupid to fuck it up.
How strange. Always this close, and always this far.