sick

I don't do well when I'm sick. I don't like being sick, for one thing. I don't often get sick, so I'm not experienced in throwing the pity party for sympathy either. I go into wounded animal status, where I crawl into a quiet place and growl at anyone and anything that comes near.

I have a cold that is finally on the wane. Today was the worst of it: low grade fever, headache, coughing, congestion. I nearly rallied myself to go into the office and then thought, am I an idiot? I'm doing the same thing I tell other people not to do. I don't need to be branded as a petri dish nor blamed for spreading this plague throughout the workplace.

I stayed home. I read. I checked emails. I did a couple of low energy tasks. I napped. Napped! I never nap. I took some ibuprofen for the headache. I don't typically do that either. I drank many, many cups of water. I had orange juice. I had tea. I had udon soup delivered for lunch. I put on my downtempo Pandora station. I read Facebook posts. I did nothing.

I was tempted to do something. I wasn't that sick. 100.4 fever, I laugh in your face. I wanted to go grocery shopping, do some laundry, pay bills, be a grownup with grownup responsibilities.

And, the grownup said, 'Take care of yourself. You're sick, for God's sake!'

So, I did.

Taking care of yourself is one of the most difficult things to do if you're a giver. I would gladly sacrifice time, sanity, and well-being to make others happy and functional. That left very little time to attend to myself, and when I did, I felt nothing but guilt.

Today, I took care of myself, and I didn't feel that guilty.