The lost year.

So, I sort of disappeared there for a while.

You may be wondering what the hell happened, because I may have posted rarely on WordPress -- but I did post. Don't worry, I wasn't in prison -- or rather, not in a traditional prison of bricks and bars. I was ill last year -- for months, to the point that I've started to refer to the period as "My Lengthy Victorian Convalescence." I never understood what people meant in the old novels by "lengthy illness," the sort where a slow walk around the garden was progress indeed. But I learned that. I even learned that sitting up on the sofa to watch TV could be a struggle.

I was actively sick for about five months -- and not with anything normally fatal, just sick. I missed (cumulatively, not consecutively) about seven weeks of work from December 2008 through April 2009. I did manage to keep my day job, barely -- and mostly just because I'm a hassle to replace during tax season.

I'm used to losing long periods of time to the haze of depression, but not physical illness. It was such a strange sensation to watch the days march by from my sick bed. The whole thing started with something like a bad flu, but progressed into an endless bronchitis. I just couldn't seem to get well, and the antibiotics they originally gave me caused me to lose over 20 pounds in three weeks. I couldn't eat, and I was too weak to sit up a lot of the time. It was a combination of things, as far as I can tell -- severe asthma that had gone undiagnosed (possibly for years), along with hypersensitivity to a couple of medications, all worsened by stress -- but it was amazing how a fever and a cough snowballed into this Other that became my entire life for a time.

I guess I had the impression that people are supposed to develop great wisdom when faced with severe illness. Isn't that what we're supposed to believe? The narratives found in popular ladies' magazines seem to imply this -- everyone from cheerful, bald cancer survivors to those that have heart attack scares all see "the light." We're supposed to slow down, appreciate what we have, and be thankful -- always thankful -- for the little things.

Well, I wasn't thankful. I just got frustrated, and bored, and kind of bitter. Even when I reached a point where I realized that I might not get well, that this horrible Other may not be temporary, I didn't have a single deep thought. I just stopped making plans for the future.

I watched the shadows track along my bedroom wall as the sun moved across the winter sky, waiting.

I never figured out what I was waiting for, exactly. Recovery? Death? For my partner to come home from work? Life became a giant waiting room in an office building where nothing was as expected, and the chairs weren't very comfortable. Everything stopped: My writing, my hobbies. I even stopped making lists, which would have been unthinkable in the "before time."

The concept of limbo became very real to me.

After the worst of it, when I was able to go to work almost every day, there was nothing left over in the evening. I couldn't cook dinner, or go to a movie. I could only rest, and be restless.

Even now, many months later, the truth is that I never got well -- not completely. Maybe I never will. I had to hire a cleaner, and I have to be very careful how I expend my energy. I make fewer plans for "fun" these days, because I can never gauge whether or not I'll be well enough to leave the house. My Victorian Convalescence continues in a fashion. I have trouble breathing. I must be very gentle when I exercise. I feel old, and worn, and very, very tired.

But I can sit up now, even after a full day. And that means I can write again.

Maybe that's all the cure I'll need in the end.