The Tissue Days

Thursday morning I woke up knowing something had gone wrong. Not dramatically—just this weight in my chest, the scratchiness starting. By afternoon I’d collected enough used tissues around my bed to mount them as installation art. Peppermint oil and ginger tea with honey became the smell of my entire existence. The apartment reeked of it.

The worst part was the parties. There were decent ones happening that weekend and I was stuck in my tissue nest watching my mood sink lower every day with no sign of improvement. At least I wasn’t alone—half of Berlin seemed to be coughing at the same time. Some mutant cocktail of flu and cold and bronchitis that antibiotics couldn’t touch. Gulcan texted something about a stomach bug, like we were all comparing notes in some city-wide plague.

Then there’s the inevitable moment where the women in your life start telling you how pathetic men are when they’re sick. They’re not wrong, but that doesn’t make it less annoying when someone’s been talking at you for two hours about how shit life is and all you can manage is this permanent exhausted groan. And I need to be clear—not that kind of groan. Just the sound of someone who feels like garbage and can’t pretend otherwise.

The pharmaceuticals did nothing. Aspirin, Grippostad, whatever—I swallowed them with juice and tea and mineral water by the handful and nothing changed. But then one afternoon I bit into a cold green apple and something actually shifted. Not healing, not even real relief, just that first moment of actual taste cutting through the fog. Funny what works when you’re drowning in everything else.