3/20/2005

I roll over onto my side in the semi-darkness. Thighs clenched upwards to my chest, hands crossed and fingers between my knees, teeth chattering and eyes squinted closed to the light reverberating from my laptop onto my desk into my room...

My right shoulder tenses with pain, I heave in and let out a cough, feeling the pain run across my right abdomen, right below my rib cage. I slowly and timidly brave the coldness of my room with my arm outside the blankets, trying to grab the thermometer by my bed. I shiver for what seems like an eternity before the thermometer beeps, then glance at the degrees. Celsius. Eyes squint even tighter as I work on the conversion, which usually takes minutes, in my murky head, deciding to give up after a minute and concluding it cannot at all be high enough for me to have to get out of bed and shiver toward the kitchen. (wrong) I try to sleep.

A pounding headache keeps me lying awake, squeezed into a ball, praying for relief. I press the right side of my ear and cheek against the pillow, and then move my face over slightly, feeling a moment of warmth, and then ice cold. I keep doing it, for that moment of warmth, like some drug-obsessed girl who cannot stop herself. I'm so burning hot that everything becomes ice cold, and so freezing cold to stop myself from trying to feel the heat...

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