mrissa | May. 16th, 2005

Sometimes dealing with the world via a sensitive nose is not the best thing in the world. For about a week now, smelling things has nauseated me. Yes, things. Perfectly good foods, but also other things around the house. Trash bags. Newsprint. (Thankfully, not books.) Crayons, oh Lordy Lord, crayons. (I like the smell of crayons. But then, I like the smell of chili, too, and it doesn't bear thinking about right now.)

Usually I'm fairly big on listening to the body, because I'm not a dualist, so if I'm hungry, playing games about who is in control is silly, because it's all me and the bits that think they're not hungry are going to suffer soon enough if the bits that are don't eat. Eat when you're hungry, sleep when you're tired, move around when you're restless: these seem like fairly good policies, especially if you've learned to pay attention to what "hungry" actually means and not just "accustomed to eating." This week, it's been extremely difficult, because the body cues are telling me not to eat anything at all because it's all rotten and horrible and will make me sick, and then they segue into indicating that while simultaneously indicating that if I don't eat something right now, I will fall over. One would think that it would be polite to put a space between those things, but no. We go straight from food-averse to having hypoglycemic moments, with overlap, and the overlap is just not fair. And about half the time, having something to eat when I suspect I would otherwise want to is a good and settling thing, and the other half, it's horrid. So listening to the body sounds a lot better in theory than it's working out to be in practice here.

( Female biology, not too squicky )

So I don't know what to do here. The timing seems to indicate that it isn't that I have a contagious virus, it's just various bodily systems being nasty. But I'm deeply cranky about it, and especially about not knowing when it will go away.