Holiday Ills, Chills and Pills

Every time I go back home I get sick. I do not know why. I guess I get worked up thinking about having to wake up at 4 a.m. and going to the airport leaving with no delays or cancelations. Then I have to hope that I won’t be a grouch all day because I got up at 4 a.m. even though I will be and everyone knows it. This year I can feel it coming, my heart is fluttering a bit more, I can’t finish sentences in a decent amount of time (that took me two minutes to complete, if that tells you anything). How can I be so anxious to go back to where I am most comfortable? It’s so weird. It could be that I’m thinking about not getting sick so much that I end up making myself sick. Perhaps it’s basic biology: because I don’t often leave my apartment I just get over exposed to humans and their nasty germs. I don’t know, but I think I’m starting to give my mother a complex.

I’ve been yogafying and deep breathing, but the truth of the matter is that I am often sick on Christmas. It must be a bad reaction to capitalism. Many pictures throughout the years show me puke-faced and pale and this was before I even began drinking heavily. At least these days I have more of an excuse. I can blame my mother for insisting we all have Long Island Iced Teas. Or blame myself for thinking I need to restock an entire three-month’s absentness from Boulevard in one night. But that’s really not the type of sick I’m talking about. When I come home, I usually end up with strep throat or a sinus infection or something that makes me go to the doctor, which is always fun on a vacation.

Maybe in some deep-seated psycho-babble b.s. I get sick only when I go home because I know I’ll be around people who can take care of me. Even if those people would rather get to spend time with me when I’m not hacking or snotting all over things or drugged out on antibiotics, they still enjoy (for the most part) being around me no matter if I’m sick or just grouchy from another early-morning airport excursion. I think because when I snap out of the grouch or the sick I’m actually a pretty decent person to hang out with…but maybe everyone thinks that about themselves.

So brain and body, here’s an open request: please knock it off this year and for once let’s have a healthy holiday, okay? Thanks.