When I was a kid, I had a book titled "The Sick of Being Sick Book" that had a bunch of things you could do to entertain yourself when you were home from school sick. Wastebasket tissue basketball, snot identification charts, how to fake a fever to get an extra day, great things that unfortunately were moot if you were really sick enough to be kept home from school in the first place. To be kept home, you had to be toeing the edge of your hand-dug grave, and the last thing you had the energy to do was make a snowman army from used tissues. It was great reading for the healthy times though, and I think I still have that book around here somewhere, buried among the remains of my childhood memory boxes. What that book couldn't do, and what countless other books I've read in the intervening years couldn't do was tell me how to keep from becoming convinced that you really were on your deathbed while indisposed with your sickness. I do this every time I come down with something nastier than the sniffles. This is the big one, I think to myself, time to put my affairs in order, kiss the dog goodbye one last time, and make sure enough laundry is done so that my family will have clean towels to swaddle my hollow shell in when I shuffle off this mortal coil. And every time, I end up getting better, albeit with a head start on the laundry.
Head space is what you make of it, come to find out. The topography of your soul is somewhat determined by the experiences endured in life, good and painful, but ultimately, you are your own landscape artist. The mountains and molehills of your mind are set, but the gardens and paths you stroll down are entirely of your own design. Your hand sets the seedlings, carefully or carelessly prunes the topiary, and either rakes the gravel paths or lets them be devoured by choking weeds.
I realized during my last bout of illness (more than a cold, but I'm not willing to discuss the hospital implications here) that I had been haphazardly planting my internal gardens and using a heavy and uncaring hand in their upkeep. I'm not out of the metaphorical woods yet, and I'm looking at a possible long stay in my own topography soon. Although it's far from spring in the external world, it's now planting time in my soul. Beauty is supposed to start from within. It's high time I had more than poisonous herbs and thorn bushes lining my barely discernible pathways.
