on being sick - or not - or whatever

I'm sick and I'm mad because it's stupid, this sickness. Utterly pointless. It's one of those things where one day you're fine, maybe a slight itchiness in the throat, a slight teariness of the eyes, and the next day, it's slightly worse. Definitely a little worse. Some coughing. Some stuffiness. And the next day, hmmm. Worse, somehow. You're not, you know, feverish or anything. You're not writhing in agony or anything. But you definitely don't feel good. In fact, you feel bad in some undefinable way that makes you mad and sleepy. Very, very sleepy. So you figure this is what sick leave is for, and you take a day off, and you get lots and lots of sleep and you wake up feeling not at all refreshed and the next day UGH you feel slightly worse and now you're just irritated because when the hell is the climax of all this not feeling good going to come? Or is it? Maybe you're just going to feel cottony and sleepy and cranky for the rest of your life? Never really just get on with it - develop a raging fever, body aches, strange swellings or whatever, so that you can tell people definitively, "I am sick." Instead of, "Well, I think I'm sick. I mean I don't feel good, but I'm not going to die. Not today anyway. Maybe tomorrow? I'm not sure. I'll let you know." But then the next day you feel kind of...better? Less cottony? Slightly less sleepy? Maybe? And then the day after that, maybe okay? And then one day you feel fine and you can't remember exactly when that happened, and you learned exactly nothing from the experience of being sick. You've developed no particular thankfulness for health or anything. You may have wondered vaguely about it during a restless dream at one point, but you never exactly promised yourself to eat more oranges or take more brisk, invigorating walks or incorporate multivitamins into your day or anything. Nothing. You've learned nothing. In fact, you're pretty sure but not entirely sure that you were actually even sick at all. Pointless. It's all pointless. Maybe I should go back to bed.