UNITED STATES—There is no worse feeling than being under the weather. When I say under the weather I’m referring to being ill. Out of nowhere this weekend, I appeared to catch a cold. It started off minor, but it seemed to get progressively worse as the days moved along. How so? For starters, I had a runny nose. Nothing and I mean nothing annoys me more than a runny nose.

It’s a pure sign to me that I’m about to come down with a cold, and like I tell anyone who knows me, when I get sick it’s not a day or two thing, I tend to be sick for about a week. Why? Don’t ask, I cannot explain it, perhaps it’s the fact that I barely get sick and whenever I do it’s ALWAYS at the start of summer or tight when the fall season is about to kick in. It is literally like clockwork every year, and I wish I can explain it, but I can’t.

That runny nose ultimately leads to me being congested and having a stuffy nose. I rarely get a cough, I rarely get headaches. For me, it’s always a runny, congested nose and a sore throat. The sore throat can be annoying as it sometimes impacts eating habits. The runny nose annoying, but it’s the stuffy nose that drives me wild. Why? I can’t sleep at night and that happened to me several times this week. I literally tossed and turned in the bed all night. I felt like I was sleeping, but in the back of my mind, I know I wasn’t sleeping, because I knew I tossed and turned a majority of the night.

I ate some cough drops, took some over the counter medicine to relive my congestion. It worked, but it didn’t fully work. I knew what was leading to my cold or just feeling drained: my body was exhausted. It seems still after all these years of life; I don’t know when to say enough is enough and to just take a break. I sometimes do too much; there is no way to sugarcoat it, and as a result my body pays the ultimate price. Why? It crashes and burns and it takes some time for me to catch my second wind America, even though I suspect I never lost it to begin with when I actually did.

My body is in need of a break; I have to take some time off of work, and all things stressing me out so that I can allow my body to regenerate; rest, relaxation, positive thoughts and placing myself in a bubble where I can be at peace. Sometimes a cold is not just a fluke of nature, it’s the universe telling you to slow down, take a break, stop doing so much at the expense of yourself. We all get sick, how long we stay sick is completely up to us.

Written By Zoe Mitchell