Today is Day 29 of my 30-day writing challenge and I only have one day left! Today I am coming to you on the brink of a cold or a severe allergy attack; either way, I’ve been sneezing, sniffling and exhausted all day. I’ve been gulping down a gross, fizzy Airborne drink and eating Vitamin C tablets like they are M&Ms. I’ve carried a dwindling tissue box around with me. My body is achy and I really, really want to go to sleep. But, I’m sitting at my desk tapping away on my computer.
As a kid, I got colds all the time. I would never get through a school year without missing a few days because I was sneezing, coughing and creating a mountain of tissues next to my bed. I don’t really know why I always got colds; my family led a healthy lifestyle, I took my vitamins and always washed my hands multiple times a day. But, without fail, I would start to feel a little tickle in the back of my throat. Then, a few hours later, my throat would start to hurt. I would trick myself into thinking that my throat was just scratchy and I just needed to drink some water. But then, my body would get tired. The sheer effort of walking up a flight of stairs would be utterly exhausting. And then, the sneezing would come.
By then, it was too late. The next one to three days would be spent sneezing and using up one (or even two) tissue box every twenty-four hours. My mom would almost always keep me home from school, making sure my cold didn’t set off an asthma attack (on more than one occasion, a simple cold would settle into my chest and turn into bronchitis). I would spend the day sitting up in bed, throwing tissues on the floor and reading Harry Potter or watching Friends. I would feel pretty miserable, but at least I had great books and television shows to distract me. The best sick days were the days my sister and I were sick together. We would camp out on the living room couches, watching marathons of Harry Potter, Friends or Bones. We would sneak candy bars and hide the empty wrappers in our Hefty garbage bags of tissues. Then we would procrastinate doing the make-up work one of our so-called friends brought over from school (we always hated doing make-up work and loathed when people “helpfully” brought it to us).
As a kid, sick days were days where reality turned off. They were days where I had a completely legitimate excuse to sit in bed all day. Now, as an adult, sick days don’t really work like that. Now, I still have to complete my to-do list and get my work done (of course, my focus and quality of work definitely take a hit, but that’s okay). So, I’m going to go to sleep now and hope that I feel better tomorrow, because, whether or not, I still have to get up tomorrow and be a productive adult. Good Night!
lovingdysfunction 