There's a specific kind of gratitude that only comes after you've spent 48 hours convinced that your body is attempting to turn itself inside out through any available exit. The kind that makes you religious about small victories – like when you successfully keep down three sips of water without your stomach immediately declaring war.
Wednesday night into Thursday was the kind of sick that makes you understand why people used to think demons were real. The kind where you're lying on the bathroom floor at 3 AM, sweating through your clothes, bargaining with whatever higher power might be listening, promising to be a better person if this torture would just fucking end. Norovirus. The undefeated, undisputed, heavyweight champion of gastric warfare.
Friday was merely really bad flu-level sickness, which, after the nuclear winter overnight, felt like a European vacation.
And now here I am, sweating like I'm running a 10K from the herculean effort of walking downstairs, watching steam rise from a bowl of Campbell's Tomato Soup.
Right now, I'll take this 99-cent can of liquid nostalgia over a $20 bowl of hand-crushed artisanally grown San Marzano tomatoes and organic herbs prepared by a 2-star Michelin chef. The same can of soup that's been sitting in my pantry for, I don't even know how many months, ignored in favor of significantly more ambitious meal options, like frozen pizzas.
But right now? This manufactured, mass-produced bowl of simple carbohydrates and sodium might as well be ambrosia. Every spoonful that stays down is a celebration, a middle finger raised to the viral bastard that tried to kill me. The salt replenishing what felt like gallons of lost fluids, the familiar taste reminding me that I've known this soup my whole life – through childhood sick days, through starving student college days, through endless post-driveways of shoveling.
The simple act of keeping down soup shouldn't feel like such a victory. But after this dance with mortality, even this small function feels like mountain climbing. I'm soaked in sweat just sitting here, my body apparently deciding that consuming soup is an Olympic-qualifying event.
But for the first time in days, I'm eating something that isn't trying to immediately escape. The soup that cost less than a dollar is doing what no expensive medicine or home remedy could manage – it's staying put, warming me from the inside, reminding me that I'm going to live after all.
They say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I say what doesn't kill you leaves you grateful for the most basic acts of survival.
To those still healthy: Take nothing for granted.
To those in the throes of this viral hell: This too shall pass.
And to Campbell's: Your soup might be mass-produced, over-salted, and available at every corner store in America, but today, it tastes like resurrection.
Pairs with: Emerging from the shadow of death, Chicken-in-a-Biskit Crackers (if you're feeling ambitious), and the profound appreciation for simply being able to exist in an upright position for any amount of time.
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