How are you?

[radegund]

This morning, unremarkably, niallm and glitzfrau greeted me with "how are you?".

I said "ask me later".

They said "OK".

If I'm low I always panic slightly when someone asks how I am. It feels so unnatural to put on the face (I'm bad at that, generally) and say "great, how are you?", which is so obviously, in many cases, the best response. Oh, I manage it, all right, but there's almost always that moment of belly-lurch. With people who know me well, I'm much more likely simply to tell the truth.

Actually, this morning I was fine - just overtired and daunted at the tunnel of activity that separates me from my next lie-in. But I didn't feel like pretending, and I didn't feel like inflicting my droopiness on the housemates. I imagine they didn't give it a second thought.

Walking to work, then, I remembered a moment in my grandmother's final illness that always makes me sad to think about. She was sitting in her hospital bed, drugged to the gills, pasty and listless, face still swollen from her operation (they'd removed ... most of ... a brain tumour), barely able to keep hold of what was going on. The phone rang. She picked it up and said "Hello? ... I'm very well, thank you". Her speech was slurred and breathy. That was nine years ago and I can still hear it.

I'm much less of a mask-wearer than many I know. I hugely prefer "don't ask" to "I'm fine". And if I say "how are you?" it's usually because I want to know.

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