In my sickness, I see every sign as either a vessel of salvation or destruction. Unable to hold two ideas at once, I either merge with one or wander amongst countless, which is like a cycle, which is like the fog. In my sickness I close the blinds to my window every night, and sometimes afterwards I rip one side open, crane the pane halfway, and stare at the distance between my body and the ground. In the morning I let a big breath out with the wind: it smells unbearably like spring or mass-produced breakfast.

In my sickness, I diagnose my condition as sickness. Every couple of months I add a new characteristic to the consideration. First it was rumination, then sensory-processing sensitivity, the trauma of heartbreak, imbalance of idealism and cynicism, cultural dissonance, self-image, rupture from the cycles of nature, mommy issues…

In my sickness I do not see many things or declarations as authentic. I often assume a position of skepticism, believing that people have a motivating agenda that is unethical or are embedded within a system that is too perverse to generate genuinely ethical sentiments that I can apply to my own living.

In my sickness, I am not always sick. I might not even be sick at all. Who makes the boundary between functionality and dis-functionality? Maybe I’m just normal, a depressed normal, an unstable normal, a mostly fine normal. How am I not, okay?

In my sickness, I am reproachful. I forgive, but failing to forget, and failing to completely forgive, or perhaps forgiving erroneously, blame the mis-forgiven once again. I bless the sun constantly, relieved it has appeared, overwhelmed that it shines, across the entirety of the sky.

In my sickness, a pimple (just red, no whitehead) grows under my eyebrow.

I trim my bangs, enough to still hide the inflammation.