On my Eight Year Bed-iversary - by Molly Freedenberg

I have been in bed for the length of both high school and college combined. If this phase of my illness were a child, it would be in third grade. If it were a president, it would be finishing out its second term. I have been in bed longer than Lost, Mad Men, The Sopranos, The West Wing, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer were on TV. In two years, I will have been in bed for a full decade. I realized this the other day while lying flat on a massage table in my living room, the base of my skull cradled in the hands of my new craniosacral therapist. She comes to me because I am too sick to go to her. “I feel a buzzing,” she said, through the N-95 I gave her. “Like trapped energy. How long have you been in bed, again?” Part of me wanted to say “not long,” because in a way, that feels true. My friend says chronic illness is a form of time travel, and I certainly experience it that way. Time slows down, time speeds up… one moment I’m living in the future afraid of what might come, the next I’m liv

I have been in bed for the length of both high school and college combined. If this phase of my illness were a child, it would be in third grade. If it were a president, it would be finishing out its second term. I have been in bed longer than Lost, Mad Men, The Sopranos, The West Wing, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer were on TV. In two years, I will have been in bed for a full decade. I realized this the other day while lying flat on a massage table in my living room, the base of my skull cradled in the hands of my new craniosacral therapist. She comes to me because I am too sick to go to her. “