Sick

I`m still sick, or I`m sick again, or this time I`m actually sick: I`m not sure which, but one or all of the above.

I know that I`m sick, because - apart from the fact that my throat hurts and my voice has disappeared and my nose is running and I`m hot and cranky and generally in a terrible, terrible mood and really wanting to shout at somebody and cry for no reason, and they are pretty key symptoms of a cold - I can`t write. I can`t write a single thing. This blog has taken me - thus far - (and I`m just looking at the clock) - fifteen minutes. And it`s four sentences long and contains about seven words repeated. That is not prolific writing. That is not even slightly prolific. I couldn`t base a career on that unless I was Alex Garland, frankly.

I hate being sick. I can handle the hurting and the sneezing and the fact that my body feels like it`s bruised on the inside, but I can`t handle not being able to write. It doesn`t matter how much I want to write; it`s just white noise in my head, or cotton wool, fluff, mucus, whatever you want to call it, and it`s making a high pitched blank sound instead of words that make sense. Like a telly being turned off; suddenly all the noises and conversations I have with myself every single second of every single day just stop, and it`s a strange, fluffy, tired silence. Words make no sense at all; not those belonging to other people, and definitely not those belonging to me. And, instead of engaging with the world and with my own thoughts and turning them around and around so that I can understand them better, all I want to do - and I literally mean all I want to do - is crawl into bed and fall asleep. I don`t even want to eat first, which must mean I am really poorly, because I always want to eat first. Before absolutely everything.

And afterwards too, actually.

So, dear blog, I`m afraid you will have to wait. I feel a bit guilty - as if I`m abandoning a child outside a supermarket while I go shopping (only a bit guilty, mind, because my dad did that to me when I was four and I survived although I got him in big trouble with mum for it and insisted that she beat him mildly for it) - but I will not write when I cannot write; the world has enough texts that mean nothing at all and say nothing at all without me adding to them willy nilly. I do that even when I`m not sick: I refuse to do it even more so when I am.

In this rare silence - where my brain has switched off and stopped talking to me like an old, lonely lady sitting next to me at a bus stop - I have no other option but to try and enjoy it, therefore: to take my painkillers, drink some orange juice, take myself to bed and watch Sex And The City on repeat (it`s the only time I can stomach it; when I`m so sick that my mind has stopped functioning. If I`m healthy it makes me angry, but when I`m sick I just watch all the colours like some kind of manic kaleidoscope). And I shall wait, in absolute quietness - with a pile of soft fluff inside my head, making me deaf to any internal thought - until I`m better and I can start writing again.

And you, dear blog - if you love me, which of course you do (because you`re my blog and I made you) - will just have to wait with me.

Just be very, very quiet or I will probably throw something.