The sickest I’ve ever been in my life was when I was 11-years-old and missed two weeks of school with the flu. It was pretty bad. I spent most of that period laying in bed, unable to walk, and totally miserable about my life. I don’t remember much about it because I slept a lot since I was in agony when I was awake.
I do remember the night I got sick though. I was really tired so I went to bed early. But I laid down in my bed before I turned off my lamp, which was on the other side of the room. At first, I didn’t get up to turn it off because I was simply too tired and didn’t feel good and wanted to go to sleep. I think I managed to doze off before snapping awake a few hours later. The light was still on, and I was shivering despite being covered in a thick down comforter.
I lay there trying to go back to sleep, confused about why I was so cold and sweaty. At some point I realized I wasn’t going to fall asleep with that damn lamp on all night. But I couldn’t get up and walk across the room to turn it off. Not because I was too sick. No, that would be logical.
Instead, I couldn’t get up to turn off the lamp because I knew that if I got up and moved around, the demon that was floating around in my room was going to possess me. He thought he was being all sneaky and invisible, but I could see him flying around, just waiting for me to uncover myself so he could swoop down and get me. I wasn’t about to fall for his demon trickery. So I spent the rest of the night laying there, shivering violently under my blanket, watching that damn demon fly around my room all night, preventing me from turning off the lamp so I could fall asleep.
Artist's Rendition
The next day, I stayed home from school, and ended up missing the next two weeks of 5th grade. I didn’t go to the doctor to see what was wrong with me. Not because we didn’t have health insurance, but because my father assumed I was just being lazy. Or a pussy. You may think that is callous, but it’s not like I died or anything, so things worked out for the best.
I figured out long ago that my grasp on reality is tenuous at best. I am just crazy enough to seem quirky and weird, but not enough to seem psychotic and dangerous. This eccentric streak is exacerbated by illicit drugs, excess alcohol or a lack of sleep. All of these things make me hallucinate. Yeah that’s right, if I miss a night of sleep and I spend the whole day seeing random fireworks of color and Gremlins out of the corner of my eye. My life is exciting.
I am pretty sure it runs in my family, because I remember several years after this, my older sister got her Wisdom teeth taken out. She came home from the dentist all fucked up on drugs, and then she got pissed off at me for being too loud because a monster was in the ceiling and could track our movements by the noise and would find us and eat us. Then again, my sister used to smoke crack, so maybe that’s her problem.
On a related note, this blog post was actually supposed to be about the time I almost made the mistake of eating two McRibs in one sitting, but I kind of got sidetracked. So I will save that tale for another day.
