sick

by Sophie

Rolling around, unable to sleep until it comes in deep waves of restless unconsciousness. Waking to see it’s damn near 6:00 pm and you’ve missed fourteen texts from people you care about. Respond to only two of them, barely acknowledging their description of the world outside – for those people it’s Halloween. For you it’s just Miserable Day #3.

Don’t eat for three days straight. Beg any deity that exists – hey, you’re an agnostic, any of them could exist – that this feeling will dissipate tomorrow. Make deals with the unknown – if I can just feel normal tomorrow, I promise I won’t smoke anymore, deal? – just to hopefully get out of feeling this way.

And what is “this way?” A general feeling of malaise, coupled with complete anhedonia and the inability to get out of bed, no matter how prison-like the sheets and blankets have become. Your mind on edge for the better part of two days when you are awake, thinking rough and paranoid thoughts. Sweating even though you don’t technically run a fever. Depressive. Unable to even walk to the shower. Completely uninterested in food. This feeling reminds me in a small way of a much larger period of discomfort I went through a little over a year ago, and knowing that this doesn’t and won’t compare to that makes it infinitely more easily bearable.

Maybe feeling this badly is the flip side of feeling all the good the way I feel it, I think in a semi-fevered daze. “Okay, I’m not trying to be an asshole, but I need to be touched soon – I can tell my mood is fluctuating weirdly,” I type out in a text last night to Jamie, who I haven’t seen in a few days. He writes back, “Yeah you are sick.” I roll my eyes. He is preoccupied himself with some life stuff but still blah, blah, I know. I let the phone slip from my fingers to the nightstand and close my eyes for another mentally busy coma. The thoughts and bad dreams will flit around in my mind while I am too exhausted to stop them by waking.

Today was the first day this week I woke before noon. I rolled over to see 10:30 am on my phone screen and sighed with a bit of relief. Maybe I could do something today. I texted Jamie. “If I get up and get dressed in the next hour, I’m coming to bother you for at least a bit.” “If you’re coming, it’s going to disrupt my plans. :-P”

Fuck his plans. I won’t be there long. I drag myself to the shower and somehow manage to bathe my body. I leave my hair alone – that would take too long. By the time that is over, I feel a lot better, able to focus. I select the most basic of clothes for the cooling weather – not enough as it turned out a bit later in the afternoon – and headed down, just barely remembering to text Jamie to warn him. I was only in his presence for about an hour and fifteen minutes. We didn’t fuck, and he was in a slightly terrible mood which I had already ascertained from his terse text messages. But two shared cigarettes and just hearing his voice made me feel so much more normal. The air was chilly as we finished those cigarettes and it felt like life for the first time in three days. It honestly felt as if I could feel things through my flesh again, not just being aware of the physical turmoil going on beneath it.

We laid in his bed briefly and talked about basic life stuff. I kissed his face and asked him to feel better. I left after a long hug. I could still smell him on me when I entered my empty house at about 3:30 pm.

I slipped into my own bed. I lay in my clothes for a few minutes before closing my eyes and unbuttoning my jeans. I slipped my middle finger down to where it barely grazed my slit. I was, in fact, wet. I hadn’t even been aware I was aroused.

Deep breaths made me aware of his scent on my shirt. I became suddenly aware of the fact I hadn’t come in at least three days, maybe four. Jesus Christ, this might be the driest streak I have had since last year,” I thought, and it struck me as hilarious for a half moment. Fingers actually felt cool over the flesh of my stomach and mons. But try as I might, conjuring all of the old standard fantasies and newer features, I just couldn’t get the job done. No matter how ready my body felt, something was weighing me down, not allowing me to float away for the few moments orgasm releases us. Even opening my eyes to see beautiful afternoon light filter through my blinds made me feel absolutely nothing.

I feel like a sad teenager. Life sucks.

++

It’s a few days later as I am writing this. I will never take feeling normal for granted again. I say this every time I get sick, but this time I really mean it. Really.

My body stirs awake at a decent hour now and I have begun enjoying life again, but right as I got better Jamie became busy with life events. Our time together has been limited.

Sometimes matters obviously must be taken into one’s own hands. Yesterday morning as I woke before work I finally reached into the bedside drawer and blindly grasped for the soft silicone of my favorite little vibrator, found it, turned it on the lowest setting. My hand slid down my stomach, the sides cut with sheet lines from heavy sleep, down to my clit. Things were much, much different this time around.

Rolling onto my back, stretching one leg straight, I pressed the softly undulating vibe against my clit. My spine reacted immediately and involuntarily as I arched my body under the blanket. My favorite experiences – lately with Jamie but you guys already know that – came to mind sharply and colorfully, not in the faded wan resolution of that disappointing afternoon. My other hand dipped down to help and I slid my middle finger in, fucking myself as slowly as possible. How else could I make this last? It felt like I was drinking water for the first time in a week.

Strange thoughts sometimes flit through my mind while I am pleasuring myself. This time it was a fleeting thought about how I don’t think I had ever enjoyed masturbation quite as much as I was that very moment. My flesh was alight with electricity as I teased myself at a glacial pace. Pulling the vibrator away from my almost painfully ready clit was the only way to keep myself from orgasm. But – you know how sometimes the absence of a touch is enough to set you off? Jamie does this thing – I don’t know if he knows he does this thing but he does – where he uses the perfect amount of pressure for the perfect amount of time, all with his fucking pelvis which, hey, kudos buddy, and when he rocks back for another thrust the loss of that pressure is almost more pleasurable than the pressure was itself. It’s heavenly. And that happens to be what I was thinking about when I pulled the vibe away one last time. That loss of sensation was so intense that I cried out in my bedroom, alone, and shook and squeezed my legs together and curled my finger into my pussy and came and came. There were explosions behind my lids. There were birds singing the Hallelujah chorus outside. It was quite possibly the most intense personally given orgasm I have ever had.

Being sick is the fucking worst. I’m very lucky in that it doesn’t happen to me super often. This was an event, one from which I feel I am still recovering. Luckily I am finishing this post sitting on Jamie’s bed, so I’m fairly certain in the next couple of hours we’ll be fixing this lack of sexual equilibrium, and then all will be well with the world. Or with me, at least, for a while.