Repleted

Recently, I was sharing a mattress in a loft in a cabin in West Virginia in a thunderstorm with a sinus infection. Needless to say, it was not the most peaceful night of sleep. At the foot of the mattress was a fan which we had turned on to full power because we were in the loft of the cabin in West Virginia in a thunderstorm while I had a sinus infection and the heat was severe. Without the fan, we would've sweat the bed many times over. The sweat would've seeped into the floor and compromised the integrity of the wood, causing us to fall through to the ground floor, the sound of which would startle the nearby bears who were already in a dander thanks to the intense spanish-themed thunderstorm (DERECHO) outside causing them to go on a killing spree to ease their troubled bear-minds.

But in preventing that doomful-day scenario, I had one of the weirdest, most sensory-overloadingest nights in my adult life.

Here's what I can remember:

(And I don't intend this to be a list of complaints. I was never mad or upset. This was an accumulation of things that caused a certain disbelief and amazement at a moment in my life that I usually associate with dancing animals and watching drunk people eat pancakes.)

There's the whir of the fan. WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! And I thought, I can tune this out. NOPE! WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! That loud hum serves as the base layer for everything else that happens. It's like the milk-chocolate coating in the candy bar of craziness.

I have a quilt I need to keep warm but makes me sweat because I'm sharing it and I'm a sweaty person (especially while sharing) so when I pulled the quilt down all the sweat evaporates and cools me cools cools me down. I don't want to go back to the quilt but now I'm lying there without any covering and that leaves my hands in want of something to do. If I don't have a covering to keep my hands preoccupied whilst I slumber, how can they be trusted?! I'm not there to look after them. Who knows what shenanigans Vanderbauzer and Cool Hand Luke could get into? Yes, those are the names of my hands.

There's the flashing lightning and thunder which doesn't bother me but I think it might be causing the dog downstairs to make retching noises every once in a while.

There's this pressure behind my nose and eyes that feels like someone is inflating a balloon underneath my face while my body is trying to compensate by pouring mucous out of everything. Mucous seems like one of those ancient remedies that actually make things much worse. Mucous is like leeches or drilling a hole in someone's head. It's wrong. When you're sick, your body doesn't need blood taken out of it and it definitely doesn't need this thick slime that needs to be sopped up every fifteen minutes by the roll of toilet paper sitting by the fan. If you do manage to fall asleep for a little bit you wake up with this crust around your face and something inside you screams, "WHY CAN'T MY LIFE JUST BE BEAUTIFUL AND REFRESHING LIKE A HAAGEN DAZS COMMERCIAL!"

At one point I'm pretty sure I felt a bug crawl across my face so I slapped myself, thought I felt the bug land beside me on the mattress and then proceeded to blindly slap the mattress in the dark for a few minutes, right next to the head of the person I was sharing the mattress with.

Later on, I feel a twinge in my calf just as it's about to start cramping up so I sit straight up and grab my leg but it goes away before it gets really bad and before I can even think about what's happening my head is down and I'm asleep.

Basically, I'm not sure if any of the night actually happened because I think I was alternating between sleep and awake about every fifteen minutes. I had no concept of time, only flashes of consciousness between short, hazy dreams that were sometimes about worms crawling underneath my fingernails.

It was like a weird torture but it was also fun, you know?  When you hit the point where your body fails to discern reality then whatever your fevered imagination comes up with your brain just rolls with it. Your consciousness kinda becomes a used car salesman in a local TV commercial.

"NO IDEAS REJECTED! YOU BRING IT DOWN AND WE WILL ACCEPT WHATEVER YOU TELL US IS REAL! NEW, OLD, CRAZY, STUPID, or SUPPRESSED?! WE ARE TAKING ANY AND ALL THOUGHTS DOWN HERE AT ANDY'S BRAIN! If you reach over and touch the person you're sleeping next to and it seems like they're a giant snake with a clown's face, three eyeballs, and an afro made out broccoli and double-refried beans then grab a flaming baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire because we will treat that as GENUINE FACT! OUR STANDARDS ARE SO LOW YOU'LL WANNA TRY TO DRY HUMP YOUR WAY TO A NOBLE PEACE PRIZE!"

So that's what that night was like.

Then I wake up and there's two mysterious bloody spots on my feet.

"Oh, I'm probably a werewolf now."

That next day I sit in the sun for four hours, go on a two hour run and by the time dinner comes around I'm in full-on zombie mode with a thousand-yard stare, not blinking  clutching a towel to my face and thinking, it's either all real or none of it's real. it's either all real or none of it is real. it's either all real or none of it is real but it doesn't really matter either way because I could burst into moths and fly to the clouds if I said the magic words.

But it was fun. It was genuine, exhausting, relaxing, overwhelming, numbing fun. THE ONLY KIND WORTH HAVING!