The Way That She’s Whispering... in Chapter 9 : Oil Above Water

[“The way that she’s whispering, the way that she’s pulling you in, lord knows I’ve tried, can’t get her off my mind.” - Little Big Town (GirlCrush)]

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So…

I’m sick. Properly ill. Respiratory Infection.

Now I know that logically no-one gave this to me BUT let’s go over the way my bat shit crazy mind is working right about now.

I know no-one gave this to me but in my head PEOPLE MADE ME POORLY!!! In my head all the daily nonsense about contamination, people polluting everything around me and tainting me, all of it is suddenly validated because now I’m ill, now all the filth and germs have invaded me and my personal space. Now everything about me has been contaminated too. Now I have to try and deal with not only the usual OCD bollocks in my head but also the need to boil wash everything that comes into contact with me…oh and me myself. I’ll happily put myself in a hot Dettol bath to burn the germs off, to peel off the skin that has been contaminated by the germs. To cleanse myself because clearly the anti-biotics, steroids, Night Nurse etc aren’t going to do it by themselves.

Fuck. My. Actual. Life.

Have you ever brushed your teeth and then gargled with diluted down Dettol? Because obviously Dettol is my saviour. Dettol solves all. Duh. As I write this I’m soaking in my second Dettol bath of the day. My skin keeps crawling because I know I’m ill. My inner crazy lady is very much an outer crazy lady atm and I need to pull it together before I go to work tomorrow. I’ve not had to work this job whilst ill until now…thank fuck it’s an early shift and not a long shift, it’s just 5 hours in Respiratory. Who knows, they might even send me home? We’ll see.

The water in my bath isn’t hot enough....or at all. I’ll have to pull the plug and start again. Everything outside crawls and everything inside aches. It needs to be hot, blisteringly hot. So hot that I come out the tub pink. So hot that you would worry that I was scalded. I’m not scalded. I’m pretty sure I’m made of Teflon, nothing leaves a mark unless there’s ink involved. I don’t bruise or scar, not even the surgeons could successfully leave their signatures when the times came. Even rock bottom will shortly fade away, and like the collective memories of my family, it’ll be like nothing ever happened at all. By Monday the anti-biotics will have shifted all the invaders and I’ll paint that big ol’ smile on my face and pretend to laugh it off with my classmates. None of them any wiser as to the battle that’s occured inside of me since I saw them last.

Last updated March 03, 2018