You begin with a full box of tissues, each one reserved for keeping your nose sane while you are sick. You carry the box with you anywhere you travel. It becomes your friend when you’re eating soup or just after you’ve taken medicine. The first time you are given the box, you may notice where it says how many tissues are in there. But to you, this number has been increased to infinity. Every time you reach into the box, your hand goes into another portal and takes a tissue from a world of never-ending tissues. Surely, a place such as this can only exist in fiction, but you’re sick and your perception is too. You gleefully plod through the heaven-sent cloth without fathoming what will soon come.
And then, without so much as a warning, in the middle of the night when the meds have worn off, you aimlessly reach for the tissue box that has been knocked off the bed. Relief soars through you when it’s finally in your hands. You reach in, expecting to feel the softness of a thousand pillows that have been slathered with the purest of lotions. Instead, you hold a solitary napkin between your fingers. No, this can’t be! And even though you know there won’t be any more tissues, your hands violently rummage around in the cardboard box, searching for more. The ability to reach into another world has come to a sudden stop and you realize there never was another world. You want to cry, but that would mean having to blow your nose with its most vile of enemies.
Dawn is a long way off. Stay courageous, my friend.
