In The Grips Of Something Sinister

Yesterday morning I awoke at 3am and knew something was very wrong.

I was flushed with fever, overcome with wave after wave of nausea, and I spent the next ten hours unhappily revisiting what I had eaten the day before.

It was a dark day. The darkness of the apartment with all the shades drawn mirrored the darkness of my soul. My normally cheerful disposition left me via the toilet bowl, accompanied by so much filth. I writhed on the living room floor begging for relief, succumbing to childish tears of frustration.

Then...

My mom appeared at the door.

She bore freezies and ginger ale. She smoothed my hair and brought me things. She called me "sweetie pie", and clucked sympathetically.

It was just what the child in me had been crying out for.

Isn't it strange how one malevolent microorganism could sweep away my pride, my many years of independence and self-sufficiency, and make a child of me? It was a humbling experience, this needing someone else for comfort. A test, too, to be deprived of activity. To feel my body weak and incapable, watching the world going on without me through the window.

I was forced into a monk-like state of deprivation, a meditative state: no food, no conversation, not even a book to read (for reading only made the nausea worse), only the constant prayer of a body crying out for mercy.