on being sick
I contracted laryngitis recently. Saturday I published my post about the unreasonable workload of college, Sunday I began feeling sick, which crescendoed into, on Monday, my voice "sounding like it had been stolen by a supernatural entity" as a friend of mine put it. Too sick to leave my room, too sick to speak. A friend who brought me dinner stood in the hallway, looking at the room numbers and facing away from me, and I could not physically make my throat produce a sound loud enough to get his attention.
It got better after a few days. From inarticulable squeaking to raspy 100-year old whispers to Muppet falsettos. I've rejoined the rhythm of going from class to class, trying valiantly to prepare myself against a rising tsunami of impending deadlines. But the sad part of laryngitis is when you are simply unable to speak.
Ways to take care of yourself: "Rest your voice!" And I do that. I eat meals alone, so as not to infect my friends. I reserve my voice for asking for food at the dining hall and participating in class. But it does mean, when I'm sitting at a table in the library in the evening with a friend, I can't talk to them. If I do, after a while my voice hurts. I started writing on a sheet of statistics homework about it, complaining to him. A situation where the only way to communicate that you have is text is a lonely one indeed.