the whole gig
I have now been sick for as many days of November — an unending flu that will not relent. First, a fire and ice fever, then the body where the world feels like sandpaper, then the splitting migraine, the hacking cough, the stopped nasal passages, the laryngitis— my voice eroded alongside my sense of resilience.
This week, my neck goes out from so many nights of sleeping in strange positions because I can’t breathe, and in one of the small hours of restlessness, I text a desperate and fleshy text message to my contractor where I lay bare my abject sorrow. I beg him for impossible things—my home, a sense of peace, my books.
*
Is anything ever easy? I ask a friend by text message one night.
No, she replies. It’s how people respond to its difficulty that’s the differentiator.
This is, obviously, not something I want to hear.