The human body is a terrifying mystery. I write this knowing that currently, my body is failing. There are systems that can not or will operate at full power, and as a result, those individual systems are preventing me from ingesting food or resting the system as a whole, which causes more systems to fail, and the cycle gets infinitely worse.
To put it more simply: I have a cold. Waaah.
The processes continuing in my body to fight off said cold, these things are positively frightening. There are hundreds, thousands, millions of little wars going on in my body right now, and my only awareness of them comes from the hacking cough and dark mucus that results from these skirmishes. Oh, and the insomnia (check the post time, I've been out of bed at least two hours...). The striking thing is that I realize that I have little to no actual control over the processes in my own body. I know I wouldn't want to, because I'm the type of person to forget to keep his heart beating. I can remember when I was young and falling asleep, and then being worried that I might forget to breathe while dozing, and then keeping myself awake concentrating on taking every breath. What if I didn't? Could this be my last night on Earth? I don't know how I ever got any sleep as a child (because those thoughts aren't particularly comforting ones, and you can see how well they're rocking me to rest now).
(Another mildly terrifying story in a similar vein is when I was fighting one of my multiple bouts with pneumonia. It had not yet been diagnosed, but it was clear I was sick to anyone who could see, and my breathing was labored to the point of being very painful. I was going to sleep, and decided that it was possible I could stop breathing over the night, and that this was an acceptable, though not preferable, alternative to what I was going through.)
So let me get to my point before I shut down/start rambling (more) incoherently/vomit is this: do I really care to be in control of myself? Could I do a better job than, well, me?
Oh, and colds? Waaaaahhhh.
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