Maybe this is a poem
Sick day. Ibrance. And sickness begets depression and depression begets anxiety and anxiety begets procrastination and procrastination begets more anxiety. Maybe this is a poem. Maybe this is burnout.
Sick day. Sleepless night. Body aches. Normal for this time in my treatment. The body never gets used to toxins. Phone blowing up. Text. Emails. Files didn’t upload. A student has covid. Where did I put the folder?
Sick day. Consider your options, Gruber. What are you options? Get out of bed by noon. Call your sponsor. Try to eat a food. Worry about your options or lack of options. Your heart is broken all over the place most of the time.
Sick day. I miss myself. The version of myself who could belly-up-to-the-bar until close and catch the 7:18 a.m. Redline to Merchandise Mart. Amazing. The version of myself who took liquid chemo (it’s like “Liquid Death,” but literal death) and then walked two miles to work for fun, to prove to herself she could do it; the version of me who went back to work four days after my surgeon took a mass out of my back in February of 2020, lifted the cancer from my chest wall in the moments before everything around me shattered entirely.
Sick day. I struggle to say “fuck it.” I try to say “fuck it.” I try to proverbially throw my hands in the air and wave them like I just don’t care. I have tried “you do you.” I have tried it all. And I’m sick. And I’m depressed. And I’m hoping that if I can knock myself out by 9 p.m. tomorrow won’t be a sick day because I’m full the fuck up on sick days.
Sick day. I think the loneliest place on the planet is Monday morning, awake in bed on a sick day. The second loneliest is around 4:45, when typically you would just be getting home but are still here, now on the couch, showered and in your pajamas on a sick day that is one of so many sick days you’ve taken to avoid worsening your sick day sicknesses, to avoid the doctor’s office, the emergency room.
Sick day. A new friend turns out to not be who you thought they were. This happens sometimes. Albeit more and more infrequently as you age. Yet every once in a while one slips into the life of some enchanting person and . . . When it comes to people, better you learn they don’t respect you earlier on than later in the relationship. Less resentment, I think.
Sick day. I think the meanest people in recovery live west of the Mississippi. Maybe Arizona makes people mean. Or maybe people are just sick, like me, and still as cold as I used to be.
See this “general malaise” that settles on me during a sick day feels uncomfortable because most days — even when a kid is cursing me out, even when I forget to upload the file, even when I have to get a PET scan — I don’t live in a state of perpetual melancholy anymore.
Most days, I am able to gather up some joy, and not so today. Today I feel like Sisyphus. I feel frustrated, and indignant, and petulant. I feel as though my heart is breaking every seven minutes like a traffic report. I feel like a dishrag. I feel like a horse.
