misery without company

I'm a terrible sick person.

Whenever I get ill, I feel like the world's biggest wimp. I cannot handle being sick in any way. I whine, I moan, I become horribly neurotic and high maintenance. Yes, I know many may claim I am that way all the time...it's one of the side-effects of having perpetually low self-esteem. I honestly do strive toward self-sufficiency, and I try to be a good man, a strong man, a worthy man. But when I'm ill, I lose any of the resiliency and cheer to which I aspire. I become a sad, pathetic little man.

I'm always astounded when I accidentally give my wife a cold. I will go through my death-throe convalescence. Then my wife starts to display my symptoms of a few days earlier, and I leap over myself to apologize for infecting her with my death-cold. I promise to be as good to her as she was to me. Then, as her cold progresses, I compare her stages to mine...and I wonder if she just picked up some lesser-variant virus or if I'm as bad of a patient as I suspect. Where I was aching, moaning, holding onto walls, chugging cough syrup, she is light, sprightly, and tough beyond ken.

Now, though, it's infinitely worse. I still ache. I still have to stop my head from spinning when I get up. I still surround myself with a siege-worthy cache of tissues, cough syrup, and canned soup. But instead of just swelling in misery, I'm now dwelling in misery, watching my gorgeous wife care for my gorgeous child, immensely sad that I can't touch either of them, can't kiss either of them, can only love them from afar. The two people I love most are next to me, but I have to keep them at arms (or virus's)-length
.
Sad and lonely indeed.