I have absolutely, utterly lost several weeks of my life, it seems.
Right before my son's birthday, in January, I came down sick, and I cranked on my homemade Elderberry syrup and kicked it right out of me...I thought.
Then in February I got sick again. I was stupidly fatigued, and I slogged through work as best I could, but took most of my off-time to rest. Then over the weekend, I just could not shake it.
I had clogged sinuses, I had congested lungs, and the fatigue was overwhelming.
That Tuesday I called out of work and went to the doctor.
She told me I had a cold, albeit a vicious one, and to keep doing what I was doing-- you know the routine. Rest, fluids, etc. And she wrote me a note to stay out of work for the rest of the week.
For the next umpteen days, I would get up as best I could, have a coffee, check my email, and that was about as much energy as I could manage before I had to crash and go back to bed. My son was off school for a vacation, which was a double-edged sword...I didn't, thankfully, have to use the alarm, but at the same time, I couldn't entirely rest because I wasn't alone, ever. But he's 15 now and I did get lots of rest time. He's such a sweetie.
I went back to the doctor on Saturday, and that doctor still couldn't really diagnose me, I think, so she decided she was treating me for a sinus infection, and prescribed me a 5-day course of azythromycin. And an inhaler.
Both the doctors said my lungs were clear, which is weird, because I could have taken a Sharpie and drawn a line across my chest where the congestion stopped and the clear began, but whatever. They still feel cloggy.
It took 3 of the 5 days of antibiotics to even start feeling a little better.
Then, yay for things coming in threes, I have a mouth infection where I'm going to need a root canal, and I'm highly suspecting Carpal Tunnel in my dominant hand (the right, if you're curious), so I'm on penicillin now. And a butt-ton of probiotics, because no WAY am I doing a yeast infection, too.
I'm a medical mess, lately. Gah. Because I'm mostly pretty healthy.
Point being, after all that, is that I kind of lived in a dreamtime during my illness.
I've had lots of time to muse, and dream, and think, and what I came to is that I think very old people, and people on the edge of dying, the reason they sleep so much is they're getting ready for the next great adventure. It's a dreamtime.
It's not really a bad place to be.
That dreamtime...it's kind of soothing. But it's a very in-between place. It's a threshold. You know, like a door? Or a window. Between this place and the next. You know how in ritual, after the casting of the circle, the priest/ess will say "Now we are between the worlds"....it's very like that.
I've gotten very quiet, in my mind. And I'm slower and more deliberate about my daily tasks, and I've taken to basking in the sunlight that streams through my bedroom window in the afternoon. I did that during my sickness-- I lay across my bed, with my face in the sunlight, and just...basked. Only, being sick, it wasn't so much a luxury as a necessity. And now I still think it's necessary. It restoreth my soul, and all that. And it's very "in the moment", because the sun moves, as we all know, with the seasons, so the time is not exactly the same every day. I have to stop what I am doing to go bask.
It's very meditative.
Go try it. Go find your place where the sun comes in your window. If you don't have a chair, or a bed, where that window is, then make a nest on the floor. Turn your face to the sun. Say a prayer of gratitude and thanks. Go bask.
