Fever

The most important decisions get made in that magical crescent between sleep and consciousness. Unless you really make an effort to impress them into your memory before you fog out into blackness and then dreamland, you never quite remember them in the morning. And I, fading in and out between the realms of sleep and awake all day, had quite a few important realizations.

I would like to say I am able to do everything. I am able to do quite a lot, which some people who know me well may regard as an understatement. Unfortunately, this weekend has proved to show that I am, in fact, quite human, and not capable of doing everything. It made its point by having a a cold sent straight from hell into my system on Wednesday, and it’s flattened me to my bed since Friday. (I’m not even kidding–it’s like a Flu Wannabe; all the usual sniffles and coughs are there, plus a tremendous lack of energy and a fever that won’t take no for an answer, despite taking Tylenol faithfully, something my kidneys I’m sure are grateful for.)  There is nothing like a good cold to remind you of your mortality.

So at any rate, this weekend Nature rang and left her calling card, a pointed warning for me to slow down. I got a human reminder too, in the form of a scathing, but well-deserved email, telling me to slow down. I forget, sometimes. I want to be everything to everyone at all times, but I forget that I can’t do the job as well, if I’m being asked to do twenty jobs. I also forget it’s bad for me, to keep saying “yes”, not just for me, but for everyone involved. It’s also good for my pride, to remember that I am not superwoman, and although I pride myself of being the queen of having it all together, I only stretch so far, and I shouldn’t ask myself to stretch that far. And usually, when I start to suffer from a swollen ego or show any signs of starting to get prideful, someone or something usually kicks it in the teeth and it goes right away. Something about Fate or Nature or my mother likes to keep me humble. It’s good for me, in the long run, although the lesson almost always stings when it’s being administered.

Fever dreams are odd too–full of bright flashes of color and noise, and then long, drawn-out episodes that seem to be repeating the same story over and over. You come back to the same themes and people and the same place, but it’s the same, yet not quite. They’re like stories your subconscious has been puzzling over for weeks, but couldn’t be bothered to inform your conscious about, but here you are now, with a 102.6 degree fever, past all dream barriers. You won’t remember the dreams when you wake up shivering, but you’ll have the funniest feeling about what you dreamed, and it’ll be an itch that’ll stay with you all day, until you go back to fever dreams later. And the fever itself, to feel your skin very warm and simultaneously feel like someone dressed you in wet clothes and stuck you out in the middle of a February snowstorm. You can’t stop shivering. You can’t get warm, and then all of a sudden, the seven or so blankets you’ve piled on are suffocating, and they’re all on the floor, until the next round of February snowstorm hits.

I read a lovely snippet from poet Andrea Gibson’s Tumblr on Friday, and I smiled, because it was so fitting.

It read:

say every fever

is a love note

to remind you

there are

better things

to be

than cool.

You can find the original here.

So yes, perhaps. There are better things to be than cool, and that I mean in all terms of the word. Perhaps this fever has reminded me there are more important things for me to do than worry about how others see me or how I measure up. I have always sailed my own ship, and I fully intend to be captain of a fleet one day.