Embodiment

Sorry my first post is about gross bodily functions, but you have to start somewhere, right?

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Our bodies often speak to us, but we're not always very good at listening.

Today my body shouted. It wolf-whistled at close range and then exploded in a tantrum of frustration. It yelled, "STOP! SIT DOWN, SHUT THE F#$% UP AND LISTEN TO ME." And, as you might expect, I didn't have a choice.

First, it went for the jugular. I got a sore throat, and it hurt to talk and swallow and breathe. 

Then it took out the nerve center by delivering a pounding headache, which turned into a migraine. I fired back with a round of potent meds and the headache subsided. I had this under control.

But neurons still weren't firing like they should. My head was fuzzy, and I started to forget things, mess things up. I saved over an important document at work and couldn't recover it. While I was fumbling and disoriented, the next wave struck like a tsunami: massive head congestion. 

I couldn't breathe, everything was heavy, snot everywhere. You could hear me losing the battle every time I tried to speak. I grasped for office tissues, whose sandpapery consistency left me looking like Rudolph after three blows. Every part of my face seemed swollen - nose, eyes, temples...

Oh, and a zit the size of Mt. Fuji had erupted at the corner of my mouth.

I grossed everyone out at an interdepartmental meeting with all the loud, juicy nose blowing. The guy on speaker phone was singing silent praise that he, at least, was insulated from the vast plumes of germs that filled the air with every uncontrollable sneeze. 

Yes, the sneezing. Perhaps it was exacerbated by the poorly-constructed tissues, but the episodes had reached beyond the powers of any antihistamine to contain. Each sneeze was bigger and more mucus-laden than the last. Like some nightmarish negative feedback loop, one led to the next led to the next and I grew rather awed at the ability of my body to produce mucus at such a rate.

As I drained tissue boxes and traded phone calls about the interview I was supposed to be conducting, I had one of those unmistakable twinges of twisting, halting pain in my lower abdomen. But I wrote the cramp off as sneeze-induced. The interview was cancelled. I went to the bathroom to relieve my bladder of the pressure from a liter's worth of tea only to confirm that yes, I was indeed bleeding. 

It felt like my body was one big hemorrhage. With an email titled "Going home for the greater good," I left the office. As I sat on the train, I prayed that the parents who'd taken their children for a midday outing would forgive me for contaminating everything around me. I'd stuffed my pockets with tissues, but it wasn't enough to make it home. As I stepped off the train, I was possessed by a demon sneeze that shot forth violently and was caught only by my bare hands. I'd been slimed, Ghost Busters style.

I curled my disease-infested hands into ecto-fists and walked out into the glaring sunshine. In the fresh light, I noticed that there was a long snot stream down the front of my skirt, and another on my jacket. I was reminded of a man I saw on the subway once who had a twelve inch booger hanging from his nose and made no effort to remove it. He was not in a good place that day, and today I was not much better off. At a certain point, there is nothing left to do but surrender control.

I entered my quarantine, changed clothes, made soup, hit the couch. I am listening, dear body. I hear you loud and clear, and I'm not fighting anymore. Now what was it you were trying to tell me?