Nausea

Not the Sartre book, unfortunately.

I do not love nausea, I will say.

I am composing this post as I kneel, solemn, at the edge of the holy porcelain throne, hallowed be its name. I feel abysmal. The cool tile floor is my only respite as I pray.

I have been nauseous for more than a week now. I thought it was food poisoning at first— this would track, knowing my history of refusing to throw out expired dairy— but food poisoning does not last a week, or so says the local clinic. It could be a Celiac flare-up— from what?— or divine punishment— for what?— but I would feel the same regardless.

It’s stress, likely. I used to get this way in high school. I wrote a poem about it once; I made myself high cleric of the Do Not Throw Up On The Floor church and wrapped my dizziness in bands of metaphor like the garb of a nun. In the end the poem came out fine. My stress subsided with the recession of whatever test or social evil I feared facing. That was that.

Except, I’m almost 22 and I’m dry heaving over my toilet past my bedtime. My body still reacts to the slightest life complication as though I’ve shoveled a handful of nightshade berries down my throat. The tile is honeycomb and the grout is dark, dirty, thornlike. I am a dying thing on the forest floor, all because the grocery store lady was slightly rude to me today, or I left my laundry in the washer too long, or I have to make a phone call in the morning, oh no, no, no.

On some level I believe all things happen for a reason, even week-long stress-induced nausea spells that feel more like a chronic disease than the actual chronic diseases I really do have. The evolutionary logic is solid: in caveman times, stress was a response to immediate physical danger, so the ensuing nausea makes sense as a physiological attempt to encourage escape. But I am no caveman. What logic has been stamped into the lining of my contracting stomach to serve as law?

I don’t like to think about it. Sometimes, like a caveman, I feel as though I am being hunted by shapes I can’t grasp in the firelight. Sometimes I recognize their silhouettes, and the familiarity is more frightening than the unknown. For reasons I’m not sure I want to remember, my body reacts to the tiniest hint of rejection or condemnation or annoyance with the physical instinct to purge the entire contents of my digestive system. I am in pajamas on my bathroom floor, praying like a child.

But, unlike my many high school nausea spells, the tile is cool. The walls are cool. I control the air conditioning; if I want it on in October, so be it. The lights are on, because there is no one I fear waking up. The quiet will remain quiet unless I wish for it to change— and, if I cry out for help, I will be met with kindness, no matter the hour.

At Kiera’s party, I was nauseous, and that was okay. In Avis’s car, I was nauseous, and I was safe. When my world is spinning, friends are not far.

I am nauseous tonight. I have been for a week. The caveman in my guts will learn, eventually, that the monsters on the wall are just shadows now— records of things receding, fading, gone.

The porcelain is unyielding; my diaphragm is the same. I’ll breathe and keep breathing and with help, all this will melt away. Amen.

What kind of picture can you even put with a post like this? I don’t know. Have a flower.