It has not escaped my noticing, nor my awareness of irony, that I have thrown up four times in the 4 1/2 months I have lived at my father’s. I am not meaning the cute, delicate cough-cough-choke sort of barfing. I am talking full-out, full-body, barf-up-your-toes-and-turn-yourself-inside-out barfing. I am talking body spasming and cramping and distorting violence. I am talking about ripping my stomach out through my nostrils sort of barfing. It so ain’t pretty and leaves me feeling beat up, dizzy, light-headed and so exhausted that I slide into a limp-rag heap upon the cold linoleum floor of the guest bathroom and lay there, unable to think congruent thoughts for quite some time.
I hate to vomit. Hate it! Therefore, I will do, pretty much, everything in my power to not throw up. Sometimes I am successful and talk myself out of it. There have been two such situations since I moved to dad’s. Had I not been successful in those attempts of stopping the projectile spewing, the number of occurences would have been six. When one time in that much time is too much and four seems over the top, you can imagine how grateful I am to have avoided the other two.
So something ripped me out of my sound and comfortable sleep this morning at 2:36. It was a sense of panic with which I rose and I wondered what in the hell had accosted me. Then I realized it. I was sick. God! Damn! It! I also knew this was one of the times that I was not going to be able to positive-mental-attitude my way out of it. I lay in a huddled mass upon the bathroom floor, shivering in my fleece robe and waiting for the assault to begin, all the while chanting away the minutes, “I am okay. I am okay. I am okay.”
Ye-eah. Not.
Forty minutes later…
It was so violent that it felt like I was spewing fire and I was left with my throat feeling like I was storing simmering coals for the next marshmallow roast. The unproductive dry heaves at the beginning, which clawed their way out of me with frightening intensity, hurt more than the bile and stomach content. But when that finally came out with a force strong enough to lift me off my knees, time and time again, I thought I was dying. And… oh. my. god. The pain of it! I was assailed all over. Every inch of me hurt.
It was only one episode this morning that probably lasted no more than two actual minutes of mind-numbing spewing. For that, I am grateful. However, this morning when I awoke, just 2 1/2 hours after falling into a comatose fetal position under a pile of blankets on my bed, I could only lay there like a fish too long out of water – weak, scared, unable to breathe and exhausted from his battle on the beach.
Good morning?
Yes, well, it is morning.
I would argue that “good” part though.
