Twelve days into the crud, I’m convinced I’m never going to feel like a human again. I’m exaggerating, but every time I cough, I assume, This is it–I’m going to die. Oh well, it’s been a good run. It’s times like these that I particularly hate Facebook, the place where every boy has a six-pack, every girl has a boy who has a six-pack, and everyone’s at an outdoor concert doing jumping jacks and drinking a pumpkin-spice something-or-other. I know this isn’t reality, but whenever you’re sick, it feels as if everyone else’s life is better than yours. I always hate feeling this way because it reminds me just how little control I have over my circumstances. A few bacteria invite themselves over to my sinuses for a party, bring along some of their friends, and I’m toast.

I keep assuming that at some point my immune system will recognize there’s a problem and do something about it. A little over seven years ago, I had a stomach virus of Biblical proportions. Everything that went in went out, and I spent a solid ten days either in bed or in the bathroom. I was convinced I was dying, but then one day things settled down. It wasn’t a miracle–in fact, it took months before I felt like myself again–but there was definitely a shift. I still remember the pair of pants I wore the first time I was able to leave the house–it was that big of a deal. Anyway, I don’t know why it took so long for my body to say, “Wait a damn minute” and mobilize my white blood cells, but it did.

Whenever I’m sick like this, I feel totally vulnerable. By that, I mean I feel like a sucker, like any cape-wearing charlatan with a bottle of snake oil could roll into town and take all my savings. Tonight I’ve looked at websites for probiotics, prebiotics, liquid collagen, and yoga. The assumption, of course, is that any or all of these things would make me healthier, but the truth is I’d probably be disappointed, since I’ve tried most of them before. I remind myself of this, then my mind says, But you haven’t tried THAT product, THAT yoga class.

Quick, someone give me two Tylenol and tell me to go to bed before I end up broke.

The upside to feeling like the junk on the bottom of my shoes is that I don’t have much of an appetite and have apparently lost five pounds. And not that I want this crap to hang on for another twelve days, but if it does, I should reach my ideal weight. As the guru I met recently said, “For every downside, there’s an upside.” So the silver lining is this incident has given me a renewed interest in taking better care of myself. You know–less whiskey, more Wheaties.

This evening I went to improv class, and one of the girls called me “basic” when my ideas apparently weren’t meeting her superior standards. (Basic means lame, boring, and not cool, Mom.) I laughed about the comment at the time, but later thought, Bitch, you don’t know me. I’m doing the best I can over here. Seriously, I wish I could tell you that I was so spiritually evolved that an incident (or even possible misunderstanding) like this didn’t hit a nerve, but I can’t. Granted, on the scale of things that are going to eff me up for the rest of my life, this one comment from a teenager ranks pretty low, but we’re obviously still talking about it. Mostly I’d just like to say I now have two thousand AND ONE reasons to be glad I’m no longer in high school.

One of the games we played tonight involved two characters who could only say two lines each and one character who could say anything. In one sketch I was an employee at a Halloween costume store, and I could only say, “I quit,” or, “Just kidding.” I didn’t pick these lines out myself, but they’re a pretty good representation of how I feel about life on days like today. I quit, I quit, I quit.

Just kidding.

I guess we all have days when life (or death) feels like it’s going to get the better of us. We compare ourselves to others, even to how we used to feel, and we think we need to be different than we are in this moment. In an effort to transform immediately, we’ll try anything, buy anything. Just a few moments ago I stopped writing to do another sinus irrigation, this time with Betadine, since I hadn’t tried THAT yet. (If you’re wondering, it felt better than hydrogen peroxide, baby shampoo, and honey.) Sometimes I give myself a hard time for using home remedies like these. I feel gullible when they don’t work, and I start beating myself up for being sick in the first place, for not having all the answers, for being “basic.” But the truth is everything I’m going through is normal–that’s what basic really means, and what’s wrong with that? After all–health and feelings that come and go–this is what life looks like–wanting to quit, but then saying, “Wait a damn minute,” and finding a reason to hope again.