Sick
I have been sick since 2024. I was hit by an unknown virus, and it has changed me in profound ways.Now, my vision is blurry. My speech is slurred. I have memory loss, and cognitive defects. My muscles are weak, my eyes burn. My skin is paper thin, and covers my body in molehills. I breathe through the nose, but my nasal passages are blocked by mucous and matter. I sometimes vomit matter. My vision is not fully developed, and I see the world in a peculiar way. I am sectioned. I see myself in my head, and other images. The images are not always realistic, and they often occur on their own. Sometimes I am attacked by other images. Strangers peering in my window, hiding around corners. The color of the light in the room of my mind is blue. My father visited me, he peed in the room somehow (I didn't notice at first : I thought it was just another of those visionaries) and his aura glowed yellow.
Someone 10km away from me is having the same exact experience as I am. We are identical, and not. I am in the past, they are. I am sleeping, they are walking. I am alone, they are with a loved one.
My sickness is an affliction of the soul as well. I feel guilty for being healthy, though my body is sick. I feel guilty for thinking thoughts that are not religious. I feel like a criminal, for thinking against my kind. I feel like my soul is diseased, and that god will take it from me. I feel small and weak, even though I am not. I am not weak. I am a determined and an expert in my field, which is the study of human misery under its various manifestations.
My hands are shaking as I write this. My throat burns. The air in the house is muffled, as if it was laden with cement.
My hands are shaking so badly I can't type, but my mind is clear. I know what is happening, and why. I am still scared and worried about my situation, but in a different way. I know that my body is just a vehicle to get me from one place of being hurt by not belonging, into another.
Now I am in some kind of hospital, even though the doctor didn't think that was necessary. My lungs were pretty damaged, and my heart was beating so fast it would possibly stop on its own. My speech was slurred. My vision was blocked by blood. I had high blood pressure. My heart. I had kidney problems from the blood, and my kidneys stopped working because i was in pain (from other things) so they upped the meds for me which made my lungs fill up with fluid and that was when I went into the hospital. I was so scared. I didn't know what was happening, and the doctors couldn’t figure out either. They ran all kinds of tests, and I was in the hospital for over a week. I wasn’t sure what had happened, and didn't understand the tests or their results. There was an MRI, many blood tests and I had to drink some liquid that contained a dye so they could see inside my veins. I was worried about getting put to sleep for those tests because from the sounds of my father's stories, being asleep meant dreaming you were in heaven. But I was too scared to die, even though a part of me wanted it. I was scared of dying and going to heaven. I had this dream once, when i was a kid maybe 7 or8...
No, I was about 4 or 5. I went into this room with my mom. We waited, maybe for someone to arrive. We sat on the bed. There was a lot of furniture in the room, and as I looked down at my feet from where we were lying in bed, I saw that a man was standing at the door. I called out to my mom, "there's a man at the door". My mom said something back, but I didn't hear it because i had chosen not to understand then. I simply didn't want to understand. I thought it was some kind of trick, that adults always try to do. So I continued lying in bed, pretending to be asleep. I heard my mom get up, and then she bent over me to see for herself. I looked up at her, she said nothing. I wasn't afraid really, just curious. My mom had on a long white robe. The man wore a long black robe too, with some kind of hood. He stood at the door to our room, in silhouette. I thought he was there to take my mom away, but then she said "it's okay sweetie we're just going for a drink in the other room". She took hold of the man's hand, and he helped her down to a chair. I didn't understand the concept of a chair at that age, but somehow knew what it was. He was a bit taller than my mom, but not by much. He had a very low voice, and when he spoke it was to answer her questions. She asked him about his clothes, and he said that they were actually her idea. She went on and asked him about his beliefs, if he believed in God. He told her that he was open minded and wouldn't put all his faith in one thing, especially since a God of Love seemed unlikely. She went on and asked him about his work, if he was a professor or something. He told her that he was just starting out, but had big plans. She talked with him for about an hour and then it was time to go. They had a few drinks and he gave her some money for lunch. He walked her to the door and they shook hands.
When I woke up, my mom was still there. I asked her about the man, what his name was. She said she didn't know, that he was just leaving. She said "he's not a creepy guy sweetie, and you can ask him for anything". I didn't know how to ask, but somehow knew that asking for money was not the right question. So I just said "can i have some money?". She said "no, but i'll buy you some ice cream on the way home".
I took the money and went out into a cold winter's night. I was scared. Confused about what to do with the money, but decided that I would ask him for more if he wasn't around when we got home. I asked the same question to my mom, but she just said "of course not sweetie he's a good guy and we'll have dinner with him tomorrow". I looked at the money in my hand and wondered where to spend it, what would be a good investment. I spent some of it buying a magazine with an adult woman's body and no breasts. I felt like a spy, lying in ambush outside our front door. My mom was playing the piano, I waited by a window to see if he would come out. He did. I snatched the money from his hand when he went by, and ran home.
Now I had about 20 dollars and no idea what to do with them. I spent some of it on food, and bought a comic book for my brother. I lied to my mom and said i was going out for the night, that's why I wasn't in bed by 11:30. When I got back, there was a strange man at the door. He must have been waiting for us to get home.
I am a creature of habit, and in this past month or so my routine has become exceptionally clear to me. I bathe every day at 5:30. I brush my teeth at 6:00. I work from 7:30 to about noon. My hands and my feet are the strongest, most developed parts of myself. My hands are like a monkey's, very dexterous. I have large feet, which do not fit into most shoes. I do not cut my nails, they are long and sharp. My hands and feet are the tools I use to shape my world.
I have been thinking about my hands a lot lately. They are like a monkeys, very dexterous. I can manipulate things with my hands that would be difficult for most humans. I can tie complicated knots. Once at a loss for how to open an bottle of wine, I had my hands. I had my hands when i was left in a city with no means of getting out, and found food for myself despite having no concept what plant matter is. I can manipulate food into my mouth with this one pair of wonder tools, more than most people.
An exhibition of abstract paintings : the images on display are not photographs, and yet they contain no elements that can be interpreted as marks or codes. They are made of yellow, orange and white colors. They have a texture that looks like oil on canvas.
I was working on an important project. I decided to take a nap in the middle of it, and when i woke up my screen was blank.
I connected to the server and discovered that I had interrupted a race between two other users, "User A" & "User B".
User A had won the race, and User B's previous submission was deleted because it contained a cheat.
User A submitted a new best attempt that was also valid, and User B could not see it because of the race condition.
I decided to submit my own best attempt, and I did.
In the meantime, User B had submitted a new best attempt also. It was valid too, and much better than the previous one. It had no cheat, it was a real improvement.
Now, here we are at a tricky situation. Whose best attempt should be considered the real, final winner? Mine, that I just submitted? Or B's, that was actually seen by the moderators? In both cases, the previous best attempt was deleted because it contained a cheat. But in the case of B, their previous best attempt was not even submitted. Only the final best attempt is valid, and this allows for cheating.