Geshundheit

Does anyone else suffer as badly as I do from hayfever? You know how when your pollen allergies kick in, you don't quite believe you are congested and full of mucus, because when you try to blow your nose, nothing comes out, and you really, really want to sneeze, but it feels like the sneeze is trapped in the backside of your sinuses, crawling up behind your frontal lobe, giving you an itchy headache and making a hash of your thinking, and you spend half the day crazy with the idea of sneezing, until you think you might be going insane, and when it finally happens, there is such a feeling of relief that you nearly want to cry - and then the mucus starts and won't stop, like someone turned on a horrible, evil faucet and then the third and fourth and seventeenth sneezes make your eyes water, and you wish you could go back to just chasing it back and forth, because there is no putting the sneeze back?



I feel like I am waiting for the first sneeze to happen, only with the shit that is building up in my head. Not mucus so much as unending questions and demands, and yes, emotions. As long as I keep them safely scratching at the edges of my brain, then I am not in love, I can't get hurt, I'll just take some antihistamine and sleep like the dead for thirteen hours when I can wake up and repeat the process until allergy season is over. But I suppose that that is not how it really works. Eventually I am going to have to let the sneeze come and admit that I really do feel deeply about all this, and admit that heartbreak is inevitable. I am far too realistic - read: cynical - to believe for a second that the things I want so desperately will come to pass, to believe that he feels a tenth the way for me that I feel for him. Even if there is a chance that I could be wrong, and that the truth is that some of what I wanted has already happened. He must care for me at least a little, or he wouldn't be sitting around eating my tomato soup and washing my supper dishes.

So here he is, right in front of me, right next to me, and I still haven't said the word out loud. I keep rubbing my nose, hoping to keep this explosion contained, and he thinks the reason my voice is hoarse and quiet is because I have a burgeoning spring cold, or that I am allergic to the nascent flowers and buds. I will do nothing to disabuse him of this notion. Maybe it really is just a cold. Maybe I really am just under the weather. Maybe I can find a way to just sleepwalk my way through until this comes to a close, and blame my red eyes and sad countenance on the Benadryl hangover.