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My drug of choice is writing––writing, art, reading, inspiration, books, creativity, process, craft, blogging, grammar, linguistics, and did I mention writing?

Monday, March 3, 2014

My Dance With Death

This is exactly what Wednesday night looked like at my house.
A lot of people think I'm overstating this very nearly dying thing, but this week I took a cold, stark glimpse at my own mortality. The void stared back, my peeps. The void stared back. I have learned how tenuous our grasp of life is, by having a host of microscopic organisms colonize my body to attempt to use it for their own nefarious purposes.

And let me tell you, if you thought the proletariat just existed but didn't really live, you've never met a virus. I don't even think they read derivative stuff.

"You're being a baby," they say. "Quit overstating things," they say. "You weren't that sick," they claim. "You always think you're sicker than you really are," they sneer. "You are so histrionic when you're sick," they remind me.

But they don't know. They didn't see the grim reaper standing next to their bed with a gleam in his eye casually sharpening his scythe with a "Carcass Rulez" whetstone.

This brush with plague put me behind on a lot of writing. The two other blogs I write for need new articles and I've only even started one of them. I was also hoping to get a new fiction project started this weekend, and instead--since I was getting about two or three hours of sleep a night--my days were spent hazed out in front of House MD reruns that I kept putting on as background noise for cleaning and then watching after I collapsed in an exhausted heap from the rampant, savage disease raging through my veins with its noxious potency.

You might think I'm overblowing this. You might say--like all the other naysayers, "Chris, it was just a minor cold." But it was a cold like none the world has ever seen.  I honestly had a stuffed up nose and a cough. I must have sneezed at least seven or eight times a day.  A DAY!!!  At one point I had fever that got up near 100--my poor brain was cooking. And I'll have you know that this "minor cold" lasted three days (and if you count the lingering cough, it was really more like five, folks).  Three entire days.

I'm lucky to be alive.

No big deal, they said.

4 comments:

  1. I have no doubt you were standing at death's door with your clenched hand ready to knock. Anything. . . anything had to be better than the dank but feverish hell of the past few days. Oblivion becomes so seductive. Warm, dark oblivion. No fever dreams. No antihistamine-induced hallucinations. No giggling hyenas waiting for the final rattle so they can consume your wasted flesh.

    OK, enough hyperbole and purple prose. Go take a nice hot shower, shave, brush your teeth, put on some clean clothes, and get back to writing! It's done. It's over with. Time to celebrate and spit in death's eye! Write my young friend! Write!

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  2. Replies
    1. I meant a cute adorable baby, who I want to snuggle with and make all better! Geeezzzz!

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