Tea Time

The Chinese herbal tea prescription seems to be helping. I felt it first on Friday afternoon, where the loud, pushing, hacking voices in my mind were still present but muffled somehow. By nighttime, they were quiet enough to let me sleep, though I woke several times. I had the distinct sense of my psyche in battle with parts of itself. Something won, and I fell back asleep.

I cannot seem to sleep more than seven hours, but that is better than before.

By Saturday, I felt calm in a mildly sedated way. This may have been from the herbs, or it may have been from the accumulated lack of sleep and the golf-ball sized tonsils I awoke too. My limbs felt wishy-washy all day and sleep came hard and heavy. Still, just seven hours, but glory be – I had dreams! Finally, a deeper sleep.

By Sunday, the sickness is full bore and I pump the prescription tea in addition to Cold Snap, forsythia, and Jade’s screen tincture all day. I feel week but that I might not get a full blown version of whatever bug I’ve picked up. There are only flashes of anxiety, in passing thoughts. Thoughts that do not eddy. Thoughts that come and go.

Sunday night remains to be seen. I pray for sleep. Good, solid, ten hours if I can have it. Sleep the world away, sleep for survival, sleep until work if I can. The deficit is large enough to justify whatever I can get.

In other news: I sent out two query letters, copyedited a book for some quick cash, and got the fine news that the Colorado Poet (Cam) go accepted to Pacific University’s upcoming winter residency. Seaside, Oregon, here we come!

But my MFA writing, oh lord. It escaped me all week. I read, buried nose first into The Night in Question (stories by Tobias Wolff), but I haven’t found a sane moment to sit at the keyboard. If the teas keep working, hopefully I’ll find my way back to the creative keyboard this week…