"I'm not sick but I'm not well..."

For my 44th birthday this past weekend, I got a cold.

Well, that’s not exactly true. Initially, I had a lovely, relaxed few days of quiet celebration with different groups of friends, and with Chad. The theme seemed to be unexpected disruption, since the few plans I did have (an outdoor movie picnic, a soccer match, a gathering at home) were all derailed by cancellations or weather. But those “foiled” plans morphed into other, perhaps even better ones, so the lesson I took from it was to not be so attached to my idea of how things could or should be. It felt nice, even a little smug: look at me and my mid-forties acceptance!

And then on Sunday night, my actual birthday, I got sick and spent the rest of the week, until right now, in fact, thrashing around (metaphorically speaking), resisting and resenting my body’s weakness.

I have a high pain threshold, but I do tend towards the “sad when sick” end of the spectrum. Perhaps because I’ve - thus far - been fortunate enough to be a pretty healthy person, I find myself indignant and even disbelieving when I can’t will my energy back.

It’s humbling, and I can always use some more humility.

It brought me back, in some ways, to those early days of the pandemic. Just a few weeks ago, on March 26, we marked four years since we here in South Africa went into what was then meant to be a 21 day lockdown. 

We didn’t really emerge until two years later. 

I was thinking about that sense of absolute powerlessness and uncertainty, the awesome, kind of terrible beauty not of Covid, but of the standstill it wrought. I remembered how, once we gave in to being stuck, Chad and Xochi and I ended up relishing it.

I still think of those days with a strange, guilty nostalgia. I was marooned at home with my two favorite beings. Plans - my very best friend and favorite coping mechanism - were a joke, a relic of the past. There was nothing to do but show up every day and to see what would happen. Or not happen. And then see how to respond.

These days, I find myself in quite the opposite mindset: back to thinking I can bend reality to my will. Back to planning months in advance and getting worked up and petulant when those plans don’t pan out.

It’s far too easy to take myself far too seriously.

This is showing up mostly at work, where each week seems to hold a fresh, daunting challenge. I vacillate between rushing headlong at problems with the battering ram of my brain, and sitting back to consider more thoughtfully. It’s turning into more art than science, which as a pragmatist I don’t love. 

I have several dear friends going through cancer treatment, painful separations, debilitating illness. But in a weird way, a run of the mill cold - that nevertheless took me out, man down, for the better part of four days, and continues to linger - knocked me back into that place of resigned perspective.

Of how little I control.

Or ever will.

Or ever should!

p.s. obviously, title credit to Harvey Danger