Waiting for the big one

"Hope you feel better soon" is one of those things we all say when someone is feeling like shite. Consequently, it's also one of those things people say to us, should we be feeling that way, too (I was discussing this fact with someone the other day, and it's been playing on my mind ever since, so please just humour me, k? Ta). And while it is the correct and nice and good thing to say, and fine and heart-warming to hear - and one can ususally tell if it is heartfelt and good or merely correct - it isn't always adequate, is it? Its not-enoughness becomes especially clear when one is saying it to another, I find, because, well, it just isn't enough, is it, when one is aware of how it can all be and how menial a thing it is to say, by comparison to the ailment: when the walls cave in on you and the water levels rise and the air around has, inexplicably, become tar, and you carry a rumbling thing inside you which really ought to reach boiling point sometime, for God's sakes, so that it could all really be dealt with, once and for all. Or at least, for now, for a while, at least until next time.

There's a tendency to want to get over feeling like shite as soon as possible. Rest and lie down and take it easy and look after yourself and you'll soon be right as rain (why, incidentally, "right as rain"? Most people grumble like mad if rain goes on for any longer than a few hours. Not saying that there's anything inherently wrong - or indeed, right - with rain going on for just as long as it wants to or needs to or, as it is, after all - so I've understood - a non-conscious thing, for just as long as it does, you understand. Just noting the fact that most of us don't consider it "right"). But just sometimes, it is necessary to feel a whole heaving heap worse, in order to truly feel better, when just getting over the shite quickly is a little like applying a bit of concealer cream on a deep and throbbing boil (sorry to be putting you off your food here). There are times when the things that make you ache must finally be allowed to come to a head, no matter how much it hurts or how debilitating the process.

It is peculiar how difficult this can actually be. One instinctively shies away from pain and anxiety (oh, especially anxiety - it just sucks, does it not?) and tries not to allow the big stuff to come through. It may well be, though, that the only time when allowing the big one to arrive becomes possible are the times when we are already hurting, already at our weakest, not exactly fit for the battle. If not then, we'll continue with the hoping and trying to feel better, we'll maybe even succeed, we'll get over the acute crisis and we'll grow some thicker skin atop the thing to be lanced. And so it gets ever harder, ever more encased in our very beings, its malignancy crippling our souls even though we may not feel the pain every breath we take.

This has come to you directly from your Near-Arctic Good Mood Committee. Hope you're having a lovely day, and if you're not, hope you feel better, no, wait.