Flu Perspective

It’s very odd to think about being sick from various perspectives. You’d think being sick is being sick: a miserable state of being in which you are prevented from doing all of things you want to do because your corporeal being seems insistent upon punishing you for what may or may not be your fault.

Obviously, I’m not happy to be sick. No one enjoys simultaneously shivering while sweating through your bedsheets, coughing so hard you think your deltoids will pop out of your back, and picking crust out of your eyes so you can see to find the tissue box on the floor, amongst other flu-related activities. Plus, being sick away from home is terrible, much less in a foreign country. Not only is your mother not around to make you chicken soup, but there is no television in your bedroom, you can’t wash the germs out of your bedsheets unless you want to spend four pounds (i.e. $8) and drag your hurting body up and down multiple flights of stairs, you don’t know what sort of medicine to buy (the same way you didn’t know what sort of food to buy when you first arrived), and you can’t even call anyone to complain about your condition because of the time difference—they’re all still sound asleep.

This all being said, I realized that I am far happier to have gotten sick here in the UK than if I stayed at UR this semester. Why? Because had I stayed at UR, I would have continued to train with the swim team for UAAs, and if I had gotten sick at this exact same time, all that work would have been for nothing. Well, the work would not have been for nothing—the work is reward in itself—but all that training and anticipation would have led to extreme disappointment.

Instead, I am faced with much more immediate but significantly lesser disappointments: tonight, I was supposed to attend a dinner being cooked by Michelle and Angela on the third floor. I may still attend, but I’m not sure how hungry I’ll be. I was also going to go to King Alfred to swim a session with the Shivers’ Swim Club tonight, and Anna, a first-floor housemate from Poland, asked to come along because she used to be a competitive swimmer, as well. Unfortunately, that will not be happening, nor will I be going out with Sophie and her boyfriend—who is coming in from a neighboring town—Adam, Anna, and Urvi, as I had intended to when Sophie invited me last night. Rather, I will be lying in my room, taking medication, drinking tea, perhaps musing on the English essay which I must write this weekend, probably sleeping.

I probably got the flu from going to Reading with the volleyball team; the entire team is now sick, as we have determined from e-mailing one another about practice this week. However, had I not gone along to the tournament, I would not have gotten to know the girls well enough to meet up with some of them at Varsity that night to watch the Super Bowl, and I probably wouldn’t have been invited by the coach to play in the game against Kent next week. I am so excited to feel like I’m about to be “part of a team.” Belonging is such an important feeling, and I think that is why I always crave being part of some team, no matter where in the world I am.