enough

Posted May 21st, 2006 by Michelle

It is pouring outside, shuddering rain slamming into the hot earth that seems to have dried out just days ago from the months of flooding. Many folks around town are upset, thinking that we’ve had enough of this. I’m thrilled. I love the rain, when it doesn’t fall every day for weeks. I love a sudden storm, the fury of the thunder and lightning and the smell of everything as it soaks clean. But Fezzik- my cat- is terrified of it, which speaks to his incredibly short attention span. The rains only stopped a couple of weeks ago. I don’t think I’ll feel so badly next time I leave him for the weekend.

I think one of the reasons I’m enjoying this storm is it makes me feel a little less bad about lying around all day. Not that I have a choice. I had violent, exceedingly painful, explosive, horrific food poisoning on Thursday, with the ugliness lasting throughout the whole night. I had no idea that my body contained that much, well, stuff, that it so desperately wanted to eject, in any way it could. The third or fourth time my body was gearing up for another one of these episodes- must have been 3 or 4 AM- I really wondered if I could die. I knew I was in danger of passing out, and if that happened, would the violence continue, without me awake to watch over it? It was crazy. And since, I’ve not been able to put enough calories in my body to function. I started very slowly Friday afternoon, with the requisite crackers and Jello, and by last night ate a piece of bread and some grapes. Today I had a smoothie, on my mom’s advice, which made me feel stellar for about 2.3 minutes (during which my dad called and got to hear me speak as a human for the first time in days). But that has worn off, and I wonder if I’ve eaten 1000 calories since Thursday night. I went to the grocery store to pick up whatever sounded remotely appealing, walked out with a bag and a bunch of flowers, and then wandered the parking lot for 20 minutes, since I had exactly no idea where I’d parked.

But I think the worst part- besides the actual losing of my lunch- was the pain on Friday. Every ounce of me ached. Every surface of my body that touched another surface was so uncomfortable, so painful, that I couldn’t sleep. I can’t imagine anything that I could consciously do to my body- workouts or otherwise- that could cause that kind of soreness. Finally, around evening time on Friday, I had enough crackers in my body to risk a few Tylenol, but the edge of pain did not simmer down until two Tylenol PMs at 8 PM and eleven hours of sleep. I suppose the pain makes sense, considering the exertions of the night before, the instant soaking of sweat that happened right before every, um, episode, speaks to just how hard my body was working to rid me of all it contained.

Three colleagues had the same meal I did. One didn’t feel so hot on Friday, but the other two were unphased. This is what my body does when it decides I’m being a total moron. This is my body’s version of saying, simply, “Enough.” It’s happened to me a couple of times before- one memorable weekend spent wrapped ’round my loo in Covina, California, after three weeks of touring in Eastern Europe, eating nothing but bread and Coke, and performing a zillion times a day, and suffering the abuses of my peforming troupe. My body said “enough” quite clearly then, and I quit the troupe the next day.

I can’t quit what I am doing, not yet. But I’ve been pressuring myself more than anyone ever ought to do a fantastic job, because so many people, I feel, are counting on me. I’ve stuck my neck way above the crowd and I’m dancing faster than I am able in order to try to keep folks from taking pot shots. It sucks, and I’m not having fun anymore. But I’ve got a job to do, and at least one more month to do it in, and what I’ve got to do is find a way to do it that is reasonable, healthy, and fun. My body has been begging me for months to change my life, and while I’ve heard it, I’ve done nothing- nothing concrete- to truly make some changes. But, boy howdy, I’m gonna change things now. I don’t know how, not at this moment, but that’s because I’m still eating crackers and lying around with my sweet cat on my chest and reading a novel a day.

Next week will be three and 1/2 days of work, and then I’m off to the Jartacular in upstate New York. And then I’ll come back, and I’ll figure out how to do this differently. In the meantime, I’m going to take another nap.