Was out of commission for a week or so there, battling whatever illness is making the rounds currently. Being sick always makes me look on the things in my life that I take for granted in a new light. Health, obviously, as I'm sure is the case with most people. More than that though, it's the secondary things that are created by good health. Freedom. Freedom of movement, freedom to do whatever you feel like doing at any given time, freedom to sleep or eat or exercise when and how you want. So many things are taken for granted on a daily basis. We might be lazy bums, sitting around the house doing nothing, but we are CHOOSING to be lazy bums sitting around doing nothing. Until we're sick. Then all of a sudden, the choice is no longer ours, and like the teenager whose parents tell him that he can't do something, immediately that's the only thing that he wants to do.
I think I gained more out of this temporary illness than I expected though. If you read through my blogs from the past few months, you can tell that I had been in a pretty dark place towards the end of the year. I was letting too many things get to me, drag me down, and I was not fighting back with the happiness that I shield myself with. It is rare that I let that depression pierce me, and much rarer still that I allow it to fester. I started to snap out of it after the holidays were over, but it wasn't until this past week that I truly felt the burden of it leave me.
I had bargained with it, tried to trick it away, conned myself into believing that it was gone, but it was still there. Do you know that feeling, the first day you REALLY feel healthy after being sick. It's like the whole world has opened itself up to you. The clarity with which you see the world on that day is unlike anything else. You're a high def person living in an analog world, if only for a day. That's how my consciousness felt this weekend. There was nothing in particular that triggered it, but the burden that I'd been carrying around for the past few months was just gone. I had pushed it into the corner, thrown a blanket over it, and decorated it with flowers for the past month, but I hadn't really removed it. Until now.
I walked down to the store on the corner this afternoon, and I had the urge to pump my fists in the air like Rocky on the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum.
Not much had changed. I'm still unemployed with no real leads on the horizon. Still can't get sick, because I have no insurance. Still using the don't break down car plan. But all of a sudden, it just feels okay.
To be sure, it was a good weekend. I took 4th at AIPCO, for $400 or so. I got another order for desserts at the restaurant. I had the grand idea of selling off my excess desserts on facebook, and it worked quite well, with all but one selling. That will dramatically increase my profit margin on desserts in the future. The weather was beautiful. Yeah, it was a good weekend. But there have been plenty of good weeks and weekends in the past few months, and none of them have had this type of transformative effect on me. I cannot say what it was, but I'm happy to have experienced it.
Last night, I got about 90 minutes of sleep for the night. The switch flipped the day before, and I think my mind just couldn't turn off because of the positive energy that was flowing through me for the first time in months. I took Benadryl, I read for two hours, I played games on my phone, eventually, I just stared at the ceiling until almost 7am. Then was awake by 9, and was wide awake. So I went with it, and the day was fabulous from start to finish.
A quote from a song that I've been listening to a lot recently: "Does anyone feel like how I feel? Then you can relate to this."
My hope is that everyone out there, friend and foe, can feel the way that I feel right this moment.
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