Down With the Sickness (24/30)
Thirty essays in thirty days, number twenty-four
There’s something strangely comforting about being sick. The world seems to shrink, and time becomes viscous. The immediacy of the body’s response, the swollen throat or chest cough or ache, anchors back to the present. The mind’s incessant time-traveling and anxiety-manufacturing mercifully abates. A sort of blissful resignation emerges.
I’m enjoying playing with the possibility that this isn’t a coincidence. Just as I’m learning to understand and practice the idea of surrender, I get properly sick for the first time in ages and am forced to do exactly that.
That’s some sweet cosmic synchronicity.
This is stunning sentence: “The world seems to shrink, and time becomes viscous.”
Stunning in that it is so unique, so beautiful, and so captures what it feels like to be a hostage to sickness. 👏
Some say getting sick is a good sign: your fight flight has finally decided to stand down. Heal well, Alex