Sediment Diary 5: Illness and Careful Reflection

On my way home from my part-time job, my physical condition suddenly collapsed. Starting from my mouth, my face, neck, chest, and then my entire body were attacked by an extraordinary itch, and I began to swell up. It felt as if my body surface was radiating heat, yet at the same time, I felt as if it were cooling down. I leaned against the embankment of the Hirose River and tried to steady my ragged breathing, heaving my chest up and down, but it was to no avail.
It was a severe allergic reaction, known as anaphylaxis.
First, I called the emergency consultation center and was advised to see a doctor at a nearby hospital. I then called the nearest hospital, only to be turned away after being told they were busy with other emergency cases. I headed by subway to a hospital that handles emergency patients as suggested by the previous hospital, but when I was turned away there too, on the grounds that they lacked the capacity to handle my breathing difficulties, I was already in a state of near-death, my vision blurring. Even after I boarded the ambulance I had arranged and lay down on the stretcher, the destination hospital was not easily decided. Like when I had heatstroke, my vision began to flicker, and I couldn't breathe, to the point where even speaking was a chore. I barely managed to answer the questions thrown at me by the paramedics and spoke briefly over the phone with my mother, whose voice was dark and trembling, unlike her usual self. I felt the shadow of death leaning over me on the stretcher, but inside my chest, it was strangely serene. Surrounded by paramedics who must have witnessed death countless times, and lying on a stretcher that must have served as a deathbed many times over, I felt not a shred of the intensely burning passion to say, 'I want to live!' or 'I left that undone!' I desperately tried to recall the faces of my family, friends, and acquaintances, thought of the drawing paper I had bought and left untouched, thought of the list of movies I wanted to see, thought of Sakiko Hirano, thought of my future plans, thought of the person I love... I processed all of this at high speed, and yet, noticing that I remained coldly detached, I laughed at myself.
'I can't even bring myself to think that I don't want to die...'
Even after I was finally carried into a hospital and began to recover through intravenous treatment, the cold wind blowing up from the hollow hole in my chest into my brain did not stop. I had expected that if I were to face death, I would encounter passions and a sense of mission that I wouldn't notice in daily life. They say that youth is beautiful, festivals are fun, and life shines precisely because there is an end. I smiled faintly at the fact that even with the crisis felt at my throat, nothing was burning within me.

At the end of August, I finally caught the epidemic in question, lost all my abilities, and was forced to writhe under a towel blanket for several days. During the short time when the high fever receded slightly after taking antipyretics, I recovered enough language to string together two or three sentences, sipped the yogurt my parents prepared, and managed to scrape by. Beyond reading books, even moving in an orderly fashion was too much of a burden. I stared blankly at the get-well message from my lover, barely managing to show concern for whether she, who was with me, had been infected. But as my body temperature rose again, all imagination, including my longing for my lover, vanished. I could think of neither the future nor the past. I think it is quite accurate that Charlie Gordon in 'Flowers for Algernon,' in the early stages of his rapid change in intelligence, became able to recall, analyze, and accept his past experiences. Intelligence might be the intensity of imagination or the scope it reaches. Standing on the horizon of being scorched by a sweltering high fever, he, I, and everything else disappear. There is only a drawn-out suffering.
Fortunately, I escaped the disaster, and as the days went by, I strongly felt my lost abilities gradually returning to my body. Starting with being able to generate coherent sentences with punctuation, I became able to reply to LINE messages and emails, engage in embroidery, and patiently face reading and movies. I became able to move smoothly up and down the stairs that I previously had to descend breathlessly while holding onto the handrail, and eventually, things progressed to the point where I could take slow walks through the housing complex as dusk approached, and my lonely isolation ended.
I returned to my part-time job and watched September pass by. My cough decreased, and my lung capacity returned.
Although the heat after the typhoon has passed is stubbornly lingering, I decided to go for a run for the first time in a while. Slowly, while having a silent dialogue with my knees.

Until now, whenever I ran, I always ran at full speed.
When I wrote characters with a brush or pen, I did so with vigor; when I sang, I raised my voice as much as I could. I poured my heart and soul into erupting with everything I had in every moment. That was my way of pursuing pleasure. Even while sensing that it was somehow strange and distorted, by pouring all my effort into it, I banished any room for doubt, defining my pounding heartbeat as joy itself.
Now that I have recovered after losing everything from my muscle strength to my imagination, I am reconsidering what joy is. Is joy only when the heart rages every second and the blood burns? The range that imagination can reach in each moment is limited, and perhaps there is a realm that can only be reached by patiently accepting and passing through a silence that does not particularly awaken palpitations or excitement. No, perhaps it transforms me, the one who reaches somewhere. I will remove the scale of life that I left at the maximum instantaneous wind speed and try running as something with a bit more length.
When I try to cut down on speed and keep in mind to run as slowly as possible, I feel my vanity rearing its head above all else. With the runners of the Hakone Ekiden in mind, it is cool to maintain a speed like a full sprint even in long-distance running, and it attracts people's attention. A voice urging me on echoed inside me, and I had a fantasy as if I were receiving the undivided attention of the drivers of cars passing by on the road. I realize how much I care every second about whether I have a silhouette that looks cool 'objectively.' Since when did I start avoiding engaging in actions slowly and patiently? Did my inherent fickleness fear the phrase 'daily accumulation is important'?
While running and thinking, I reached an apple orchard. I was surprised that I could pass through the point where I would usually have been weighed down by the initial full-speed sprint and become oxygen-deprived, with a restrained lightness. Extending the distance you can go in one second is a good thing, but if you have the time, why not run carefully for many seconds and minutes? Just as light can only circle the earth seven and a half times in one second, my full-speed sprint has a limit that ends at the apple orchard. However, just as light emitted from the sun can visit the earth if given eight minutes, if you look at it with a slightly longer perspective, you can go much further. A full-speed sprint, which can lead to impatience and poor physical condition, is not the only way to go far. If I keep repeating battles I cannot afford to lose, my heart will not last. There must be a joy in not having died from anaphylaxis, the epidemic, or other causes, by running slowly and carefully through silence, defeat, and nothingness without straining. While cherishing the attachments to this world that come to mind instantly, such as the faces of my lover and my cat, even when sick or healthy, I want to sit down and look forward to something unborn that cannot be fully expressed by that alone. It seems the journey is still continuing.