Sick

I'm sick. Again. Laying in bed a little later than usual, watching Moulin Rouge and lamenting the fact that I, who am normally very healthy, has succumb to being sick twice in one month.

I'm lamenting something more though; the fact that there is no one to spoil me, pamper me. I'm not the sort to accept this sort of offer, mind you, and I have been getting them lately, but it's from people who haven't spent enough time with a healthy me to suffer me with a cold.

It's just that I've never had anyone do that for me, really. I was married for almost seven years and I've never had someone stop what they were doing to take care of me.

At some point it became that I was the sort of person that would just get out of bed and weather through. The sort of person that didn't need pampering. That's not how it started though. That's where it ended up after not getting it for long enough.

There are some things in life we'll claim to never have needed if the person we hope will give it to us, fails to do so often enough. We'll be fine without chicken soup, we can get our own tissue, we know where the medicine and the bottled water is.

Sooner or later we'll believe that about everything that person has to offer, including their love. We survive weak moments without it and it becomes a luxury and no longer a necessity, if we ever do even feel it.

When that love is gone, what we'll miss won't be the love that was there; it'll be the love we wished were there. It'll be the cool cloth on the forehead that never came. It'll be water never pressed to dry lips or the soup that wasn't carefully spoon fed us when we are too weak to do it ourselves.

We don't want to need another person. We don't want to rely on them to do these things for us. We do, however, want them to have enough care, compassion...love....to do these things for us without being asked or feeling obligated.

So the next time you go on about your day while the person you care for lies in bed, feeling under the weather, ask yourself if you've brought them comfort with your question "will you be ok today" or if their quick confirmation is meant to make YOU more comfortable not feeling obligated doing anything for them.