so I've been sick. really sick for quite some time now. it sort feels like a preview of how things will be in a few days. and it was not the fun kind of being sick where you are lovingly pelted with food and treats and given free reign over the tv from your bed type of sick either.
it started with a traumatizing work experience where i literally questioned the kind of person i was (for real). when it began no one even wanted to believe i was sick, and our lack of medical supplies (paracetamol, proper fluids, or a thermometer even) let my fever go unchecked for 2 weeks and then it morphed into asthma which then morphed into the supersickness of the year: pneumonia with complications of chronic asthma, bouts of hyperacidity and vertigo. and so now i am in a semi-permanent state of dizziness and terrified beyond belief of facing my "work" once again.
the only good thing that has come from being sick is that it has allowed me the luxury of being well enough only to read. i managed to finish Madame Bovary, which I started reading when I was still in college. I felt so grownup as I turned the last page, and as the sad story ended it made me realize how there are some people who go through life that lonely. It made me wonder how many people do get to live happy lives, actually. I've felt so unstable and so discontented with everything in my life, I've come to realize. It feels like I've been living a cartoon version of what my real life should be. in the back of my head there is this fear that this kind of life is what happens when you read too much or watch too many movies - that your own life ends up paler in comparison, so much so that no amount of real-life excitement could ever compensate. not for those orchestrated movie-montages where music swells and starlights gleam above you, where every word is carefully chosen, every frame carefully edited, lovingly put together. how can real life compete?
another interesting idea that i read is from this book Pleasure by Nikki Gemmell. She wrote about how former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright rediscovered her hatred of beef after divorcing her husband of over twenty years. She said:
"We haven't freed ourselves from the pursuit of love, despite all the feminist advances of recent decades. We never will. I wonder now, what Miss Mansfield would be more astounded by - a woman in charge of the foreign policy of the world's most powerful nation or the fact that that woman had eaten something she didn't like almost every night of her married life."
here is another interesting thought process from the same book.
"The aim: to manage your life rather than simply let it happen to you. So much unhappiness stems from a lack of control." <-- i can so relate to this. I remember going to a creative writing class where one of the guest speakers wrote a short story wherein its heroine was an insomniac who spent her nights rearranging the furniture, while her mother was asleep. i thought it was beautiful then, but it is such a mold of my own life that it seems more like a prediction than a memory.
from the same book, on driving:
"Driving gives women a great sense of strength and independence. It's no surprise that so many Muslim women are forbidden to drive. There's a subversive freedom to it, the thrill of independence."
on sex:
"Marilyn Monroe said, 'I don't think I do it properly.' What a relief to read it. No one is born a lover, it has to be learnt."
on porn:
"Porn is all about what men can do to women, rarely the other way around. It's about men exercising control over women - who are always available. Life is far messier than that. x x x I wonder if some men drift further and further into porn because it's so much easier than the challenge of a real relationship."
I just love how all of these ideas are ripe for my picking. Even when I am sick. So thank you books, for being my companions during this trying time.
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