The Genius(?) of Self-Delusion

 Because this keeps happening.  Allow me to illustrate the most recent example.

 On Thursday night, I went to bed around nine.  I woke up a couple of hours later, absolutely freezing.  I was so cold that I at first tried curling up because I couldn’t bear to leave the bed, but finally got up the courage to go turn up the thermostat.  I usually keep it at 66℉ at night and 69-70℉ during the day, so I turned it up to 68℉, wrapped myself in my bathrobe, pulled on an extra blanket, and went back to sleep.

I woke up at half-past midnight, sweating like crazy, horribly overheated.  The thermometer on my alarm clock said it was 70.6℉ degrees in my room, and there I was in two extra layers.  So I threw off the extra layers and went back to sleep, but I slept very badly, waking up every couple of hours until I finally gave up and got up around 4am.

Unsurprisingly, I felt pretty bedraggled.  I puttered around a bit and happened to glance out the window.  I was going, I thought, to have to shovel before work.  It looked like it had snowed a couple of inches.  So at 5:30, I went out . . . and found that it had snowed SEVEN inches.

Hard labor time.  I hauled snow off my driveway and away from my mailbox until I was panting in the freezing air.  Then the plow truck came by and I had to redo a great deal of my hard work.  After 45 minutes, I decided it was good enough, and gave my sister a warning call.  I couldn’t help her shovel, but I walked my dog over to bring her my ergonomic shovel, because back pain sucketh.

The whole time, I’d so over-exerted myself that I just wanted to lie around panting.  But I had to leave for work at 7:30, so I headed home . . . and realized, on the two blocks back, that I'd vastly overestimated how warm it was out.  I'd been warm when exercising, but my brief walk back deeply chilled me.

So I got to work, helped with initial stuff while wearing my heavy coat despite being indoors, and then had to go around the corner and sit down, because I felt so exhausted and overwrought I was dizzy and nauseated and about to fall asleep.  I asked for, and was granted, an extra hour for lunch so I could take a nap.  That got rid of the dizziness and the worst of the nausea and fatigue, and I got through the rest of the day.  I was sometimes cold and sometimes hot, which is unsurprising because the building I work in is old and has very eccentric ideas about heating.  So I’d freeze and then turn on my personal heater until I was overwarm and then turn it off.

For the record, the symptoms of over-exertion, which I looked up, are:

·        dizziness

·        feeling faint

·        lightheadedness

·        nausea

·        shortness of breath

·        thirst    

Additionally, panting in the freezing air had wrecked my throat, and it was very sore and that soreness made me occasionally cough.  I drank a lot of water.

Anyway, I went to bed at 6:30 that night, wisely grabbing an electric blanket and setting it on low to help stabilize my body temperature.  After talking all day, my throat hurt so badly it was unbearable and I’d start coughing unless I actively had a cough drop in my mouth at all times.  I kept drinking water, and I tried a few other things, but my stomach was feeling kind of unsettled.  I took ibuprofen for my headache, but the headache itself didn't mean anything, because EVERY ailment of any variety gives me a headache.

The next day was Saturday.  I wasn’t feeling great but not that bad, so I spent a couple of hours puttering around baking bread until my eye sockets started aching.  As in, every time I moved my eyes, my eye muscles were like, “ow, I ache.”

So I looked up what caused eyeball aches, and nothing seemed right.  Then I remembered—hold on, aren’t weird muscle aches a sign of Covid?  And yes, apparently, eye socket aches are the most common ocular symptom of Covid.

So why, then, wasn’t my lymph node particularly swollen, huh?  Clearly, I was fine.  In fact, didn’t I have an oral thermometer somewhere around here?  I’d take my temperature!

100.4℉.

Nah, that can’t be right.  I'm 34 years old.  I don't get temperatures that high.  I’ll take it again.

100.4℉.

Really?  I think this is the first time I’ve used my thermometer.  I’ll test it in my hand, just in case it’s fault.

It’s not faulty.

Well . . . maybe I should get Covid tested.  Tomorrow, if I didn’t feel better.

Sunday, I felt better.  Yay!  My fever is gone!  I’m clearly fine!  If only my throat weren’t so sore.  Hey, sister, do you think it’s okay for me to go to work tomorrow?

Sister: No.  You’re going to go get Covid tested tomorrow.  You have almost all the symptoms of the Omicron variant and YOUR EYEBALLS ACHED.

Me: Oh.  Okay.

The point is not whether I test positive.  The point is this KEEPS HAPPENING.  This is the third time in a row that I’ve been sick and have had a whole, flawless set of explanations that demonstrate that I’m clearly not sick.  Why do I have symptoms?  Clearly, some other reason.

This self-delusion, it's . . . it's like some sort of hidden genius. . . .