Sick.

It was a dark and stormy night... in my head, that is. I turned the lights off promptly at 8 p.m. and went right into bed for what began as hours of agonizing, sleepless pain. For once my stomach wasn't the issue, but every muscle in my body ached, and when I laid in a position for more than a few seconds, it just hurt more. My head felt like it was going to explode, and when the fan was on I got too cold, and after I'd get up to turn it off, I got too hot. I went to pee what seemed like every thirty minutes, and often times I got out of bed feeling as if I were drunk, stumbling down the hall ways, blurry-eyed and bumping into the walls, my equilibrium upside down. I lay back down in bed and the room would spin, but quickly turned into me just spinning around because it would be the only way to alleviate what felt like the devil taking a sledge hammer to my back and clamping a vice to my head. Listen, I've dealt with pain before. I can live with a little tummy ache and a head ache. But this was another level, man. For twelve hours, life was pretty miserable. But there was one positive amongst all of this... my pillows were pretty fluffy, the fluffiest pillows I've had in two-plus months.

I must have taken a cat nap, because I looked at my phone at 4:26 a.m., saw that I had a missed call, and magically, all the pain was gone. I walked down the street that morning pain free, whereas the night before I was walking down the street wishing a car would just smash into me.

I took the entire day to rest up some more, threw back some meds, started reading my new Paulo Coehlo book, found an English written newspaper (as rare as a Bar Mitzvah in South Dakota), and tried to comfort myself as much as possible. Later on, I sat down for some food and rewarded my stomach for being a good teammate and not jumping in on the ass kicking that took place on myself last night, and drank an ice cold Pepsi, something I rarely do. But hey, my belly earned it.

Although no amount of money would make me want to repeat the same hours of pain I went through last night, in retrospect, it was a good, hardening experience for me. I didn't have anyone to rub my back and tell me it was going to be all better in the morning. I didn't have a roommate to bring me some water and a cold towel. I didn't have a tv or a funny movie to distract me from the sickness. I didn't even have the simple opportunity to eat a comforting meal. I had myself, a stuffy $4 room, a rickety fan, a hard bed with no blankets (cheap guest houses don't provide linens), and a prayer that it would all end soon. I had no choice but to suck it up and muscle through the worst feelings in the worst conditions, knowing that it would go away eventually.

While a storms damages the surface, it also waters the soil below.