I am sick. The classic kind of ‘lying in bed all day feeling lonely with a bucket next to you thinking how to make it to the shower today’.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but the thing I hate most about being ill is that I start to blame myself for it. What did I do wrong? What I am doing wrong? What I am not doing while in bed what I should be doing? Feeling time ticking away and strangely enough craving hazelnut merengue pie from Albert Heijn (that’s when I know I’m really ill…). I know, resistance to the max. When I am not sleeping, I’m watching you tube videos like this one on what it means to be sick. And I feel even more nauseous and incapable etc because they tell me -of course- that one create’s his or her own illnesses. We create imbalance, allow unresolved emotions to rot away in our bodies, we allow stress and lack of sleep into our lives. When you are healthy you think you can take on the world, it is when you are weak you need to show what you are made of. So this time I try to do it differently. Not to blame myself and get out of bed before I am well again on paracetamol. I try to listen to the body. Sleep, rest, drink tea, meditate and think of what I will do differently in my life once (if?) I can get out of bed again. I know the answer, being even more honest with myself. Not being so scared and shy. Standing for what you truly believe in. Why is it so hard to just speak your truth? Every time I do so in private I see people either shiver or shine. I am afraid of the shivering and I am attracted by the shining. I remember what my father once told me: “Do you think Picasso was a nice person?” I know I have to deal with the shivering, give people the creeps, so what, do it even more, push it, go for it. I have done it a lot in theory, and a little in real life. But what can life be about if you keep on pleasing others and end up sick in bed because of it?