Interoception

It feels like a very slight, thin, barely-there hair is dragging along the outer length of my left hand. I ignore it the first and second time, but upon the third, I lift my hand to investigate. My assumption was correct. Nothing. The sensation continues and it feels as though it might be inside my hand like a small animal. I make a fist and watch the skin and muscles of my hand respond in rise and swell. Is that a small lump? Is there something actually under my skin? The paranoia subsides as I realize that the small lump is just a swell of skin.

I go on with my morning. It is nearly 6 AM. Working from home today, I go down the steps to start a pot for green tea with elderberry. My lips are dry yet sticky at the same time from mouth-breathing all night so I run a warm, wet paper towel over them as I wait for the water to sing. I lean against the counter in the dark kitchen. It is still dark outside. Today is the winter solstice, as well as the beginning of Yule. The northern axis of our Earth is tilted as far as it can be from the sun. It is also called the Hibernal Solstice, bringing to mind the word hibernate, where one retreats into winter’s quarters, secludes one’s self.

I sneeze into my hand and with it comes warm, wet matter into my palm. I stand there for a moment, hand cupped near my nose, helping the viscous strands to detach from my nostrils. My head pounds from the sneeze and a droning sound, like airplanes far in the sky and miles away, plays in my ears. I wash my hands, blow my nose, and wash my hands again. The kettle sings and I pour the hot water into the tumbler of green tea and elderberry. Head still pounding, a tumbler of tea in one hand, a bowl of strawberries in the other, I head back up to the spare room where I work. Going up the steep steps, I note the difference in my breathing. If my lungs were a harmonica, a hole or two is blocked.

I am sick.

It started three nights ago with aching glands. In the morning when washing my face, I discovered a wash of crusty snot on my lip and cheek. Otherwise, I felt fine throughout the day. That evening, my husband Brian and I went to look at Christmas light displays. With every illuminated bird I counted, a pang of ache radiated in my fingers. In the middle of the night that night, under a heated blanket and weighted blanket, I awakened into a state I haven’t felt inside my body since I had the flu many years ago. My entire body felt gauzy and every movement felt impossible, so I didn’t move. Shifting a foot into a different, cooler realm of blanket felt like violence. The movements required to turn on the TV for a distraction and comedy relief, felt impossible. The movements to possibly call off work nauseated me. I imagined myself passing out or gagging while explaining why I might not be able to come into the office. This experience was reminiscent of panic attacks that sometimes awaken me in the middle of the night. So that is how I handled it. I lay in the fetal position, in the dark, telling myself and my body that these gauzy, nauseated, and weak throes are just another way for the body to exist in the world. What interesting bodies we inhabit. I soon enough fell back to sleep and awakened hours later, calm and easy with the alarm to get ready for work. I felt okay.

Face masks are reminders of the heat inside us. Throughout the workday, my upper lip and nostrils burned as the rest of my body trembled in fever. I kept my distance, sanitized, and fell into a lingering exhaustion. By lunch, my crackers and cheese were an almost-tasteless bolus of cruminess and chunky creaminess. My workplace has been a cesspool of illness with no ways to really escape it. I updated Brian with my symptoms. I’ll have the COVID test ready for when you get home.

It is that time of year. The time of year where when you sit quietly on your couch reading and you suddenly hear skittering and pitter-patter above your head. It moves in anxious, careful spurts across the ceiling, its mouth possibly full of string or crumbs. It is likely building a muff in a cavity somewhere, preparing for winter. Opportunistic and just trying to live its little life, the mouse is minding its home and its mousey business. Mouse, like a metronome, paces back and forth throughout the evening inside the guts of our home. I try to imagine what that must feel like for the house if the house were sentient. Like a tickle in the throat. Or one of those itches where the body miraculously knows to scratch another part of the body to soothe it. Or how when you pinch a part of your body and you feel a twinge on another part of your body. I think of the dark recesses behind the walls of our 134-year-old home. The hands that had built it. Messages that might have been written in the wood. I think of the wooden support beam in our basement. It is made of ash, the cursive of ash borer beetles written along it. I love that beam. I think about how over the years, that beam will be smooth from my touching it every time I go down there.

The Terminix car was parked in my spot in our driveway. I greeted the gentleman dismissively, not out of unkindness, but because the sun’s low-hovering gladness blinded me on my commute home and I was simply exhausted. Brian showed him the door as I collapsed into a dining room chair. I apologized for being ill, as I do. He handed me the swab for the COVID test. I stuck the swab deeply up each nostril and twirled it until my eyes watered. It reminded me of when I was a child and stuck bristly tufts of my own hair up my nose for fun, just to make myself sneeze. The ends of my hair, coated in snot. Brian administered the rest of the test for me as I showered in the dark under scalding water. I made sure to especially enjoy the sensory-field of delights that come from showering. I closed my ears with my fingers to hear the water pelt my scalp. I tried to imagine what note it would be on a piano or violin. I realized that I could not smell the steam, one of my many favorite smells, as slight as it is. I massaged my head and lathered my body. I stepped out of the shower and without grabbing a towel, I opened the bathroom door and yelled down to Brian for the results. Drum roll, please! he said enthusiastically. I could hear him sliding towards the dining room table in his socks. Youuuu haaaaave COVID!

The Winter Solstice, or the beginning of Yule, is the first day of winter. A time to don the nest, bit by little bit. Yule itself, a celebration of the hibernation to come, celebrates the longest darkness of the year. Feasts of the year’s harvest, as well as ritual sacrifices and bloodshed, are historical of the Yule days. Yule beckons thanksgiving to the Sun King as he graces our faces with more light each passing day. It is a time for good intention and harmony. Still sopping wet and naked in the bathroom’s doorway, I leaned my head against the door frame. No way, I said. No. Not again. My parents immediately came to mind. This would be my first Christmas in years where I am not a fleeting bird, some stork dropping off gifts and flying away because there was work to do. I was supposed to stay for three days. Soon after, I called my parents with the news, and cried. They felt bad, but talked to me with grace and optimism for a Christmas at a later date. After hanging up, Brian hugged me from behind. Guess you’ll just have to spend Christmas with little ole’ me, he said. I laughed and cried at how perfect he is. We will hibernate.

Then I slept for 11 hours, punctuated with groggy awakenings where my body felt neither here nor there. The sleep, sometimes sweaty but always still, felt like a going inwards, into a dark cave with yule logs, tea, and stacks of dusty books. The sleep was wallpapered with a subtle gold pattern and the cave floor covered with plush, burgundy rugs. Slippers everywhere. Stationery and pens everywhere, but no letters written. An overstuffed chair faced a roaring fireplace and there I sat in it, the fire bewitching the salt and water out of me. I slept in a sleep like that, like a mouse in its muff, for 11 hours.

This Yule morning, the sky is graced with a pink that I spy through blinds in a window. The day goes about itself, the Sun King starting his journey across the sky. I start my journey through the rest of the workday. I talk or reach out to people who hurt in ways that sunrises or cups of tea cannot fix. I join a virtual meeting and a colleague texts me Your face looks super glowy today <3. I perform the muscle memory of work for 10 hours, all the while taking stock of how I am existing in my body. Nose congested, lips dry, head aching, neck muscles sore, breathing slightly different, only a radiating body aches, head congestion, bloody mucus, no exhaustion, perfectly fine appetite, and the little animal under the skin of my hand has disappeared.

Work is now finished and Brian is picking up my medicine. I put bird food in the feeders. My dog Silas and I escape into a wormhole in the woods adjacent to our house. It is already getting dark yet there is white fungus that I notice from afar because of its feverish glow. We follow game trails as the Sun King, bereft of a dazzling, colorful cape, disappear into a gray horizon of mountains. When we come back into the house, we have briars in our hair. I let the dogs into the yard to let out their zoomies. They chase each other in circles around the lilac bush and bolt across the yard. They play and exist in their bodies in such perfection, without symbol or reflection. Both of them suddenly come to a stop, seeing or smelling something that I cannot. They lift their noses into the air, silent and present in the near-darkness. I lift my nose and sniff too.