The World Looks Different from Here

Inspirational song: Space Oddity (David Bowie)

I was sixteen the year my cousin came to town to go to the local university. From then on, my habits changed, as my social life took off. A couple of my high school friends and I spent nearly every day at his house, hanging out with him and his college friends. We had big parties on the weekends, and at least once a week fed our nerdy souls with a long running D&D campaign. I started dating a college boy, learned how to drink hard alcohol, and kept a wild girl schedule during those years. One night, early in spring break, we had one of those parties on a weeknight, that most likely ended up with D&D, or maybe it went the other direction. Things ran really late, and I started to get really tired, but I don't think I had driven myself to the party barn, so I had to wait for my boyfriend to drive me home. I eventually gave up waiting, and I stretched out on the floor, along the base of the couch, and went to sleep. Without me nagging him to drive me home, my boyfriend just kept hanging out with our friends, until somewhere around 2 am, when he realized I had been asleep for hours. When I finally turned up at the house, my mother was livid, and grounded me for one of the few (only?) times in my life. The next day, I could barely pick myself up, so I was slow to make my case to my mom, that I didn't stay out on purpose. It might not have been that day but the next when it occurred to both of us how sick I really was. Back in those days, I felt that very few illnesses warranted a trip to the doctor, but that one did. Months and months of burning the candle at both ends left my immune system down, so naturally I contracted mononucleosis. I spent weeks lying around, a month out of school, and closer to three months weak as a kitten.

This week has felt like having mono all over again (without being a skinny little teenager). I even caught myself being afraid of anything bumping into my stomach, like those months in high school, with a compromised liver and spleen. When I got the first occurrence of this infection I have now a year and a half ago, it took me at least four months to get it completely out of my system. Besides not being enthused about going through an extended illness again, I am left wondering, if I had lived this life 200 years ago, what a fey little creature I might have been. I would have been considered that awful word "sickly," and probably not been very long-lived. I think perhaps I should keep in perspective how much I have been able to accomplish than if I had been alive in any other era. The alternatives are a little too depressing.

I am going to keep my chin up and focus on what I can do now. And one of those things is play at Bonfire, around the cool construction I have been forbidden from revealing yet. Too bad I wasn't able to help build anything this time around. Once I'm recovered, whenever that is, I'm sure they will let me play with the power tools too, or at least wield a paintbrush. I will play to my strengths.