Down

It's not a good thing when your body, weak and aching, wants to give in to the dark eye of sleep but your mind is whirling, spinning endlessly, a machine made to run forever, that wheel that never, never stops. Jolting awake is twice more painful when your arms, legs and shoulders remind you of their weary, defenseless plight, and twice again more dreadful that you can only lie there blinking, begging and screaming in your mind for the mercy of unconsciousness. I would improvise, but I cannot bear to hold a book up, and sitting upright to wile the hours away through virtual distraction is out of the question. All my senses clamour for attention: I am too hot but too cold and my throat is in flames and the pulsing insistence of muscles and limbs and joints too useless for anything but delivering pain is driving me to unbearable frustration.

The worst of it is I get the sense that I didn't just get it, I made myself sick.