Diagnosis: Feelings

Feelings are like this cough that won't leave my lungs.  They rattle around inside of me and clog up my throat.  They tear at me when they come tumbling out without warning or permission.  They burn and they sting and I try to shallow my breathing so they don't catch me off guard.

They settled in like a bad cold so many years ago and then the people came in like weather, changing the climate of my life so I could never truly get well.  I was sick so long the first time, that I forgot what it felt like to be well.  He came in and out, hot and cold, and gave me a long bought of pneumonia and bronchitis and the flu one after another.  They all hurt.  They all felt like death.  They all left me with wet eyes and a throat raw from choking on my feelings.  They left hollows in my cheeks and bags under my eyes and made my chest ache with every fragile breath.

Days and weeks and years passed and finally, I didn't shake so badly when I inhaled.  I met someone who felt like clear air.  Like summertime and deep breaths that didn't hurt.  He felt like breathing after holding your breath for a long time.  And when he left, the cold came in so quick I didn't have time to find a jacket.  I just caught a new cold.  Not so bad as the one before, but the cough lingered for months.  It game me headaches and made me stay in bed and hide from the world.  The world was sickness, that's all I learned from him.  That, and the fact that even things that feel like medicine can make you sick.

When the feelings that felt like sickness finally slipped away, I opened the windows and pulled the curtains back.  My heart was clean but it was empty.  It was lonely and sterile with a smell like pain that made it feel like a hospital hallway.

I didn't know it was coming the last time.  The feelings and their germs snuck up on me when I was least expecting it.  All it took were dark eyes and soft words and they were there in my lungs and I've been coughing for days.  It's an ugly, uneven cough that sounds rough and painful and weak.  It sounds bad but I feel worse.  I feel empty one second and like I'm drowning the next.  I feel so tired, I wish I could quit my job and sleep for the next two months.  I want to sleep until I forget him and I feel better or until he remembers and the truth knocks the sickness right out of me.

Because this cough is lodged in my lungs and the feelings are stuck in my chest and I can't breathe or think or sleep or move.  I want my life back, even if it means wandering the sterile halls of my hospital-clean heart all alone for a while.  I'd take clean sanitized air over this rattle in my chest and the scratch of my throat.