It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see them. I did. It was the dread. It moved under my skin like a sickness. It spread. I could feel it, always, as it manifested as a pinch in my throat when I swallowed or a slight ache in my neck, a migraine, a random sneezing fit, buckling knees. A range of symptoms that came and went, that had no intelligible connection, that persisted despite medication and heating pads and stretching and herbal tea. Something was wrong with me, physically, every day. It could be a different thing or the same. It could last for a few days or a week or two before switching to
...more
