Last week was midterms week. I don’t know about you guys, but I thought I was going to die. First of all, I had midterms to study for. Studying always makes me feel like dying.
Second, I had papers to write. Lots of papers. And, like studying, thinking of papers that I have to write often leaves me with an overall lack of desire to continue existing.
But third, and perhaps most important, I was sick. Not with pneumonia or the flu or even bronchitis, but it was just that overall feeling of yucki-ness and that warm sensation of snot everywhere I turned.
I know I’m not the only person who was attacked by those evil germs-who I like to picture as cartoon mosquitoes with bulging eyes and a thirst for blood-during the busiest and most stressful week of school. It was like an epidemic!
The normally bright and bouncy college student was replaced with a zombie, walking around in sweatpants and consuming large amounts of orange juice. We all became a shadow of what we used to be a few days before, in what seemed like our prime.
After being sick for a few days, I got sick of it. I was sick of being sick! I wore sweatshirts for three days straight, and got so annoyed with blowing my nose and disrupting the class that I just crumpled a few tissues up and left them hanging from my nostrils. It wasn’t pretty, and I’m sorry to anyone who had to witness that.
Even worse was the unfortunate incident of the Full Body Cough that happened in the Dining Commons during lunch one day.
I was overcome with the urge to cough, and involuntarily, I threw my head back and took in a deep breath, only to jolt the upper half of my body forward and my knees upward.
Try to picture this if you can: I gave myself a bloody nose by kneeing myself in the face.
I can’t remember the last time I was that embarrassed and bloody in public.
Then there were the drugs. Being heavily medicated is not a good thing for me, mainly because my normal state of mind is comparable to a 10-year-old on high doses of Valium already.
I would come up with something brilliant to say in class or a funny quip for a friend, but right before I was about to speak, someone would do something distracting-like take a breath-and I’d totally forget what I was going to say.
My grades dropped, and my friends (who usually only like me because of the hilarious jokes I tell) all but disappeared.
This was not what I signed up for! My cold was ruining my life.
Fortunately, as all things, my sickness began to pass. I was on the upswing! But the chorus of sniffling all around me was driving me crazy. Every five seconds someone would cough, sneeze or sniffle. Even in my new-found health, sickness was ruining my life.
Finally, at my wits end, I took matters into my own hands. The only way to get away from all the germs, snot, loopiness and bloody noses was to stay in bed.
And that’s where I’m writing this from.