I’m sick. But it’s not the kind of sick that you can see. It’s not the kind that you can just take a pill for a couple of days or maybe the rest of your life and be okay. It’s not the kind of sick that people want to be around either. It’s dark and it’s sad and it walks with me everywhere. It’s like that character in Charlie Brown that walks around with that cloud over his head. It’s like those rainy days that you hate because you’re all alone, it’s dark outside and you don’t have anyone next to you. Except it rains everyday where I live. And here there aren’t sunny days and our rains aren’t the refreshing kinds that come before Spring flowers or the ones that come after those long hot summer days.

My mom peeks in and asks me if I’m going to get up.
My sister peeks in and asks me if I’m going to get up.
My brother peeks in and tells me I should get up.
A little girl dances in and says “Mommy can you get up? Today it’s pretty outside I’d like to go to the park.”
I lay there, my eyes closed and I try to imagine that it’s pretty outside. Then it dawns on me that it takes way too much out of me to even think pretty thoughts.

These days it feels like they’re on a rotation. It’s never the same person that walks into my room and asks me to get up the next day. It’s always Mom, then sister, then brother. And sometimes that sweet little girl decides that she’ll take a crack at waking Mommy.

Time passes by. Except I’m unaware that three days in bed had turned into three weeks which eventually turned into three months.

Then came the day, when the routine rotation continued.

It’s Mom’s turn to come into my room but something is different about the way she opens my door and enters.
I lay there facing the wall like always but this time she doesn’t ask me if I’m getting up today. She sits at the very edge of my bed ever so lightly as to not disturb the dark peaceless thoughts that plague me every day and night and she tells me, “Tomorrow you have to get up.”

I lay there thinking doesn’t she know that I am sick. I can’t get up. I can’t make myself live a normal happy life. I’m filled with demons that suck the life out of me, making getting up harder as the days go by. I’m not well. But I’m also not the kind of sick that doctors cure either. I’m the kind of sick that needs lots of love, care and support. Plenty of beautiful words and random hugs. Praises and accolades throughout the day for the simplest things like brushing my teeth and changing my clothes. The kind of sick that needs “hoorays” for walking out my front door, down the steps, through the lobby, to the corner, across the street and into the store to get a pack of my favorite gum. I’m the kind of sick that makes it hard to get up but I wasn’t always this way- so please keep loving me until it’s not so hard.

Shanel Boyce is a mother first and a whole lot of things after that. She is a first class collector of hats (not the physical kind you wear to look cute but the kind that gives you super-heroine abilities.) Every aspect of her life is about caring. Nurse by trade, psych student by choice, no wonder writing is her glorious escape. Poetry is her first love because no one likes rules. She took up writing because her friends sit at her feet and listen to these wonderful stories about all the curveballs life throws and just how she plans to keep hitting home runs.
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