Being Made of Two Halves.

I’m currently going through one of my not infrequent bouts of feeling ill, the symptoms of which are nausea, soreness, mild fever and general debility. It produces a deep sense of apathy which removes the will to do anything requiring even a modicum of mental or physical effort, and so I seek to read something which I hope will take my mind off the symptoms and possibly lift my mood. 

It doesn’t work. What happens instead is that the condition pollutes whatever I’m reading and turns it from a positive, pleasant experience into a negative and unpleasant one. This reminds me of being given oil of cloves as a remedy for toothache as a child. I liked the taste of cloves, but I soon came to associate it with pain and developed an aversion to it.

And so now, me being me, I’m pondering whether my response to the situation is universal or just me being a wimp. It’s all about understanding the human condition, you see – that old sense of splitting into two people, the observer and the observed. I wonder whether the same process will happen when I’m taking my last breath. I imagine half of myself watching the other half and feeling desperate to tell somebody about it. I think I’m going to need a good medium.

(And half of me finds it surprising that the other half managed to write this little post. Do I feel better for it? A reply in the affirmative would be tempting fate, wouldn't it?)