More wedding

billygean ♦ September 3, 2009 ♦ 1 Comment

I find I write with a strange and haunting sensation that we have done this before.

MindReader hands me and ice cream and I sit on the sofa and try to pretend for a few minutes that I am not dizzy AND tired; a combination I have not before experienced.

“So, the wedding,” he says.

Tears immediately fill my eyes. One of the consoling parts of the wedding, last year, when I sometimes had to be carried to the car, was that I would be well for this one, his other sister. I avoid MindReader’s gaze as that anxious feeling that EVEN THOUGH I have achieved distinctions and running in the snow and doing ballet in the kitchen and ten hour shifts at BathShop, it is exactly the same as last year overcomes me.

“I mean, you’re probably not QUITE as bad as you were last July,” he says, looking at me. I meet his gaze briefly and we both acknowledge that it’s a close run thing.

“The wedding’s all in one hotel, so plenty of lying down.”

I bite my lip. People who have flu and not chronic illnesses do not try to attend things when they are not well enough. They simply recover, and then resume their life, chalking it down to a bad day, a bad week. It strikes me that I do not particularly WANT to attend 20 minutes of a day and lie down in a room on my own for the next 10 hours.

I look at MindReader. He looks hopeful. Last year, as soon as I realised I could sit up for the duration of a church service, I knew I was going. Why wouldn’t you go if you could? Wouldn’t it be worse to sit at home for three days on my own, I reasoned then?

I nod. “I’ll go,” I say. “It’s better than nothing.”

MindReader grins. “I’ll visit you lots in the room,” he says with a wink.

“You don’t think it will be detrimental, do you?” I say.

“I think,” MindReader says, looking at me, “that it’s a good compromise between what your body wants, and what YOU want,” he says, separating the entities so I feel human once again.