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# being sick
- URL: https://www.thisismia.org/being-sick/
- Published: 2026-10-24T18:26:20.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T18:26:20.000Z
- Author: Mia Chaput

is not for me. My body doesn't know what to do with being sick to the point that it ultimately feels like a punishment. 

As birthdays pass I realize more and more my body was not built to sit still. While I do appreciate sitting in silence and observing the quiet, my body and brain don't enjoy the forced sit that comes with sickness. 

The forced sit feels almost as if I'm in trouble, like it's something i could have prevented and so really it must be my fault that i'm in this forced sit somehow. Despite the intellectual understanding that sickness is just a part of life that happens seemingly unpredictably, maybe if i hadn't gotten behind on my zinc or didn't miss a couple nights of supplements then i could have avoided being sick. But that thought process is under the guise of a godly power that I do not have, and yet my brain still attempts to hold me to a godly standard that I could never consistently fulfill. so layer one of my being sick is shame for becoming sick in the first place despite becoming sick is not 100% preventable. 

layer two is where the actual sickness lives. This time the sickness was COVID-19 which I've not suffered from in years, at least not to my knowledge. It really took me down on a Tuesday with severe body aches. I could barely sit up in a chair long enough to finish my chicken noodle soup which was the only sustenance my brain could agree to attempt. The body aches were the indicator and so I took a test and it turned out the coronavirus made its way to me. 

The third layer is like a haze or a type of limbo. I kept making slight attempts to be productive since that's my default setting, but would become winded and fatigued so quickly. It's so disorienting when you're used to being more of a "busy body" like myself. Because I can't do near as much as my brain is asking me to do, I end up suffering from an auto-pilot of self-inflicted shame. This comes from years of self punishing when I can't meet a standard, personal or otherwise. And that leads to the worst and fourth layer - depression. 

That depression is unlike any other outside of a bad hangover. It's a spiraling combination of the aforementioned self punishing and a FOMO for all the things I want to do but can't. This time I found myself on the couch *finally* finishing the last season of ER (example of self punishing/judging thought) feeling sorry for myself and angry at the world for being sick, as if it was delivered personally. It's fascinating how quickly the psyche can turn on you and how easy it is to follow it's pity traps. For me it initially feels like self-soothing and then like passing a continental shelf, I eventually drop into the deep end. It's a cathartic, self-consuming swaddle of thoughts and feelings of what was and could have been while simultaneously disregarding the present and what it's abundantly providing. All of this mental and emotional dysregulation just from becoming sickly. 

I don't have an answer or a suggestion on how to change this experience, nor do I really desire to. I personally find it easiest to ride the wave and trust that it's temporary. And I find it a fascinating a reminder of just how malleable we can allow ourselves to be.

If you're sick reading this, may you be bestowed the joy that can be the observation of rest and missing out sans depression.