"In Sickness and In Health"

The irony of working in places like hospitals and clinics is that as you attempt to make people better and healthier, you end up getting sick. I've been more sick over three months than I've been in the past 5-6 years. only Irony would find this amusing.

I won’t complain too much, however, because as I am momentarily married to my bed, I have all the time in the world- or until Tuesday- to write. Joy. 

I have a whole other blog post I wrote during a lunch break last week  on the burnt-out-career- housewife, but that takes too much thought, and in my current delicate condition, I’m feeling much more sentimental and emotional. That could be the cough medicine, steroids, and antibiotics talking, but I’m sure that being sick always makes me feel mushy.

Why would being sick make me feel mushy? Because being sick takes one to a very vulnerable place. I don’t know what it is. When we’re healthy, we: go to work, eat lunch, have a coffee break, work, work, work, go home, clean or do dishes, make dinner, Facebook, check e-mail, neglect twitter altogether if you’re me,  do whatever things we do normally, and then go to bed.

I forget how much I need other people when I'm feeling well. Oh, but when I'm sick,  I'm reminded of  how much I long to be taken care of, to have someone make me soup, for someone to rub my achy, tired back, and push my kind of gross sick day hair from my face, and laugh with ( or at) me when I get weird from taking a good ole trail mix of medicines...which leads to incidents of knocking over CVS Christmas decorations, and then proceeding to be very ungraceful and clumsy in my effort to cleaning them up...(this flaw of trail mix medicine is also it's strength is that you really  don't care about the people watching or your purse hanging over your head, or the awkward position it takes to gather sparkly Santa wands...)

All I want on sick days is to be taken care of. I care very little for anything else. All I want is company, and to snuggle up, and to know that someone cares. Someone really cares; because only the people who really love you would cuddle next to a sick, coughing person, or not laugh at you when you’re being overly emotional…because it happens (I've cried three times today. Once over getting a shot in the bottom, once sitting in the waiting room after the shot in the bottom, and once in the car because shot in the bottom added a new achy place). And so you know, I'm one of those people who shudders at the thought of crying in public, so you can only imagine my attempt to use my long hair as a wall between me and everyone else in the waiting room as I tried not to cry. Fail.

Anyway, I am always convinced that I just need someone to be there. The shot in the bottom and crying in the waiting room would have been significantly better, and I even suspect funny. And how I love funny. 

I’ve never thought too much about, “in sickness and in health,” at weddings, but I was thinking about it today. I was thinking, “dag gummit, I’m going to be sick in the future, and I’m going to want to be taken care of.” And I feel so sorry for the people who were promised “in sickness and in health,” but the person promising it didn’t really mean it. They kind of meant it, but not really. I also feel bad for the people who are loved less as they get older, and wrinkly, and their hair turns gray, because the truth is, that isn’t love at all. They are loved less because the people who promised to love them, in fact, loved themselves more.

 I’m very new to what love is, but I know it isn’t selfish. I know it’s sacrificing. And I also know that it make snotty tissues, and hacking up lungs, and crying over aching hips not so bad. 

I think we spend too much time romanticizing the idea of love. We associate it with dancing, and laughing, and roses, and youtube proposals (as a blog I read earlier mentioned), and youth, and health. I think we forget that we’re people who have tiring jobs and schedules, and who age with time, and who get old…really old, and sick. I think we associate romantic gestures like face held kisses, and dates with candles, and walks late at night, and being completely uncomplicated altogether as being the epitome of love moments. Right? Those are the moments that we assume will make us feel the most warm, and lovey…because maybe we’re taught to think that happiness revolves around everything being good, and in order, and just as it is "supposed to be."

 I’m realizing that it is in the messy moments that you love the most. When someone is hurting, or has had a bad day, or is sick, that very vulnerable part of their heart is exposed. The door is cracked for you to walk in and to love them…and I think we feel it more then. I think taking care of someone removes the selfish thought that you did a good job of doing your hair, or setting up the perfect date, or any kind of you at all; there is only the person you are caring for, the unselfish want to love them and care for them better. And this is, dear reader, is what love is all about. If you can't promise to sacrifice the "you" for "us", you shouldn't promise love at all.  

In the quiet of the bathroom, on a cold floor, or in a tissue ladened bed, or  when you need help changing out of third-day clothes,  you realize that that familiar face loves you, not because you are all put together, or you look very attractive that day, but because they love you.

I’m sure that couples who have special dates, and “perfect” long walks, and a great story altogether love one another, but I’m recently convinced that the ones who get up at 4:00 in the morning to take care of the other, and who clean dirty soup dishes, and who know how to be unselfish in caring for the other, love each other much.

So here’s to sick days, and being reminded that we should all learn how to love each other much. Because what’s a great love story without stuffy noses, achy backs, and sick day hair? What's a great love story with selflessness?