The Sickness Unto Lent

I know, I know. I couldn't resist, although Kierkegaard may well be rolling in his grave. Actually, his little book about despair and being a Christian made a profound impact on me when I read it in the summer of 2004. I just had to look up what year it was I read it, which means I should probably read it again sometime soon. Maybe this summer. In any case, the short explanation is that it's been Lent for almost three weeks, and during that entire time, I've been sick, with a cold that turned into a sinus infection.

My mother has always maintained that you can tell a lot about a person when they're sick, and I'd agree with that. For myself, I can't remember a time when I've been ill for three weeks straight (it came on the Monday before Ash Wednesday, so as of today it's been three full weeks). I've had surgeries it's taken me longer than three weeks to recover from, but that's different. I can't recall an actual illness which has lasted within my body for this long. For the first week or so I did what I normally do when I'm sick: power through it, and treat it like it's mostly not there. I took some cold medicine, but usually just before I went to bed. In the winter I sleep with a small humidifier every night anyway, because my apartment has the humidity of a desert during the winter, and so I also brought the humidifier into my living room during the evenings and let it run. During the evenings when I was home, of course, because I didn't really let the cold interfere with my social schedule.

That's how I usually deal with being sick, but this time the cold didn't go away. In fact, as week one became week two, it went from being just a head cold to a rather nasty cough as well, and started including sinus headaches. This started affecting me. I started getting very annoyed with this cold. You know that fuzzy feeling in your brain when you're seriously sick? That became my way of life for most of the past two weeks, and I hated it. I started taking time off from work, as much as I could, and the days I went in because I had to, for various responsibilities I couldn't or refused to delay, were painful. I could feel myself trying to swim, except it was just walking down the hallway: that's what moving forward felt like. One of the mornings I had to go into work I broke a sweat just getting myself dressed. Those days were the last straw (in my slightly addled perspective on things) and I finally went to the doctor. I'm not one of those stereotypical guys who can't stop to ask for directions somewhere, but I am definitely stereotypical when it comes to seeing a doctor when I'm sick. I felt like warm death on toast before I dragged myself to my physician. And before you ask, especially if I've talked with you at some point over the past few weeks, yes, I said "oh yeah, I'm sick, and it's annoying, but I'm fine" to everyone. Because that's what I do. Often when I'm sick, it's true (e.g. the powering-through-it attitude from week 1) but I also have trouble admitting sometimes when I'm really not doing well.

And Lent is, to be frank, a time during the liturgical year to be honest with ourselves and admit that we're not doing well. While I was laying in bed or on my futon, too tired to even listen to music, my mind would wander in the ways it does when you're sick. I don't mean the hallucinations that come with having a fever - that wasn't it. It's the people who appear before your eyes you haven't thought of in years. The things you should have said, should have done. The ways you could have been kinder. When you're sick, the world seems like so much more of a hostile place than it used to, or perhaps it's always been this hostile, but you're ill-equipped (pun intended) to weather it right now. The people you want by your bedside to hold your hand, and I don't mean parents. The small things you should pay more attention to become larger than life. You start praying to God and realize with shame that it's the first time you've prayed in days, or weeks. God doesn't show up, and you feel more alone than ever. No one shows up, and you alternate between self-pity that no one cares and honest thankfulness that no one has to see you like this. You know there's a list of people long as your arm you could call, both near and far, and they'd sit with you, literally or metaphorically, and share your anxiety. But you don't call. You hope against hope your stupid neighbors will just be quiet and let you drift in that haze between lighter and deeper sleep. But what kind of attitude towards other people means these things? You're ashamed all over again.

If you're anything like me, the self-recrimination when you're really sick is something fierce. It's not like depression - I've been through that too - but it's a taste of depression, coming to the cliff and looking into the abyss, and the 10% of your brain that always wonders what it'd be like to throw yourself over becomes 20%. Too exhausted to pray for healing, you just pray for unconsciousness. And saying this may be wrong, theologically; I don't know. But I feel like, looking at the past three weeks, that's a good Lenten prayer. "I understand my brokenness, and I don't want to understand more of it. Please let my mind go dark, let my body collapse. It would be better than the torture of knowing myself too well." Lent asks us to look at ourselves in the mirror and not turn away, and I don't like it, because it's painful. Being sick, especially being sick for a long time, causes us to be still and know that we are fragile. We are exceedingly easy to break, physically, mentally, emotionally. The neglect of our spiritual selves makes us easy to break spiritually, too. And I don't mean to say that I think the point is strength. The point is survival, putting one foot in front of the other in all these ways and moving forward as a whole person.

Most of the past week or so has been like this for me, and sharing it here is harder to do than I thought it would. And what of the people I know who are sick with much worse things, for longer amounts of time? There's the friend of a friend with stage 4 renal cell carcinoma, who should have died last year and could literally die any day. There's the high school friend I reconnected with a couple years ago who has dysautonomia, and every day it feels like her body is trying to kill her. There's the friend here in Bluebell Town who, for well over a year now, has convinced herself so absolutely that she's sick, she's actually become so, with unexplained dizziness, fatigue, blackouts, stomach troubles and rashes all over her body. All three of them my age or younger, all three of them having to struggle with the depression that understandably has come alongside being sick in such serious ways for so long.

"It's a sinus infection," the doctor said. "Antibiotics for a week." Have I mentioned yet that when I'm sick I can be, sometimes, a bit of a drama queen? I'm so blessed, the worst sickness I can point to is a 3-week sinus infection. And so I'm ashamed yet again, but this feels different, feels less like self-pity and more like I'm being put in my proper place in the world, which is a small place. And that too is the reason behind Lent. The doctor's visit happened at the end of last week, and after being on the antibiotics for a few days, I'm getting better. My sinuses are draining, though they aren't drying out yet, and the cough has almost disappeared. When I do cough, it's a medium-sized clearing-your-throat cough, not the garrulous hacking which shook my torso every time it struck. Still with the headaches, but they're decreasing in number and duration. I feel like I'm slowly re-entering the real world. I took a late-night drive last night for the first time since Lent began, and as usual, it was a soothing experience. For me, being alone in the car means, 99% of the time, listening to music loudly and singing along and playing instruments on the steering wheel. My voice, froggy as it is under normal conditions, had improved at least to the point of being able to croak along for a while. For now, that is enough.

I had wanted this Lent to be different, to be special somehow, because I honestly have been neglecting my spiritual growth lately, and I came up with a list of half a dozen different things I was going to do. Two different sets of Lenten readings, one of them with a few friends and sharing thoughts on a blog together, but that hasn't happened. Going to Mass once during the week, and that hasn't happened. Other things which haven't happened. It's frustrating to realize I fell into the vending machine Christianity I get so annoyed with in other people, where you put in your money and then you wait for God to spit out the sugary feel-good treat you requested. Instead I've been given a sinus infection for three weeks. I should be more careful with spiritual growth. I often forget it means suffering. I often forget what Lent really signifies.