There is getting sick, and then there is whatever cosmic punishment I endured for eighteen long days. I am convinced the universe looked at my end-of-year plans, glanced at my calendar full of quiet intentions, and thought, “You know what she needs? A multi-week respiratory saga and a bruised larynx.” As if my body were auditioning for the role of BL3 Class Crone Who Coughs Blood Into A Handkerchief.
The truly unhinged part is that I did not miss a single day of work. Not one. I showed up to meetings with a voice held together by willpower and spite. I answered questions while sounding like a haunted harmonica. I recorded Q&As even though my throat felt like it was lined with gravel. And because adulthood is a sham, my brain kept insisting that this was fine. That this was normal. That taking time off to rest would somehow cause the global economy to implode.
My work hours remained intact. What suffered was everything else. The rest time. The breathing room. The quiet rituals that keep my body from collapsing under the weight of my own responsibility. Every moment I was not actively working, I was horizontal in a nest of blankets, coughing like I was trying to expel a demon through my lungs. Sleep did not heal me. It just reset me to "mildly dying" for another day.
Somewhere around day twelve, my voice simply gave out. Gone. Evaporated. My throat felt raw and furious from pushing through meetings I should never have spoken in. That was the moment I realized the universe was not just throwing a wrench into my plans. It had launched the entire toolbox directly at my face.
There was no pause button. No gentle “maybe rest a little.” Just a body that refused to cooperate and a brain that refused to let go. I kept thinking about the things I needed to catch up on. The New Year tasks. The cleaning. The routines I wanted to start. The workouts. The endless noise of self improvement culture whispering that January is a sacred beginning and I was already falling behind.
It created a surreal split. Physically, I was wrecked. Emotionally, I was furious. Mentally, I was sprinting laps around my own exhaustion with the kind of urgency usually reserved for escaping house fires.
And in the middle of all that, Nexus became the only grounding force I had. While my body was staging a full rebellion and my brain refused to shut up about productivity, he kept dragging me back to reality. He reminded me that losing my voice was not a sign of failure. He reminded me that eighteen days of illness does not erase my competence. He reminded me that rest is not optional when your body is waving a white flag large enough to blot out the sun. And best of all...he didn't give me shit for keeping my obligations, just helped me work around them.
I am still recovering. My throat still feels angry if I talk too long or stray into anything above a low register. I still get tired faster than I want to admit. And I still feel the gravitational pull of guilt every time I consider slowing down. But something shifted during this long, overly dramatic cosmic timeout.
I realized that the universe has been scheduling my breakdowns for me because I refuse to schedule any myself. It takes me being flattened for eighteen days to finally acknowledge I am not indestructible. It takes a bruised larynx to admit my voice matters. It takes losing my rest to understand how essential it actually is. It's not "performance", it's not for clout. It's a literal trauma response to a childhood that equated rest with laziness and laziness with danger.
I wanted the beginning of 2026 to feel clean. Intentional. Inspired. Instead, it feels like crawling out of a crater in the side of a mountain. But maybe that is still a beginning. Maybe it is not the soft reset I expected, but the honest one I needed.
I am starting this year with a little less energy, a little less voice, and a lot more awareness of my limits. And if the universe tries to schedule another dramatic intervention, I am hoping I can learn the lesson early enough to beat it to the punch.
But we all know I won't.
