There’s some sort of shiver, a tremor, a little earthquake trapped in my body.
I try not to analyze what it is or where it comes from- I try not to wonder which combination of bodily processes, imbalances, dysfunction, ailments is creating this feeling.
A feeling like, I am a container- that is no longer large enough to hold what is inside. Like I am full of waves lapping up against the walls of a pool before eventually spilling over.
It’s hard sometimes to bring my brain to this place- where creative interpretation is welcome and easy and the sensations in my body are neutral - not good or bad.
It is hard to feel my heart rate leaping around and not ask; is it because I put honey in my green tea? Is it tachycardia? Sinus arrhythmia? Anxiety that is so underlying I don’t notice that it is anxiety any longer? Is it from smoking weed? Is it from my rx? Is it—-
Here is the best thing I have found in the dark;
I am building a muscle that allows me to make a choice: sometimes I allow the storm of what if’s, i write them down, i chase answers on the internet, i try new solutions, i make new appointments, I must do this. It is important. It is often productive.
But that is not where I want to live. It is the preparation for having a life, it is not a life.
So I can do this other thing to take a break, I can enter the third door I found through therapy that is not ignoring your symptoms/feelings OR analyzing and trying to fix them.
It is feeling them and letting them speak to you - allowing them without trying to change them or fix them.
The dissented part of my abdomen on my left side feels heavy, something the shape of a fist sits there, inside. It’s tender like a bruise. This is the part of my body I have so often tried to annex, I have divorced it from myself. I have sent my awareness, my breath, the hands of other people, on routes that avoid this place. It feels too delicate to be handled by others. Something wise within me knows that the most fragile and human parts of me exist there - I needed barriers to protect this part. I think my body is brilliant. I enjoy thinking that body has a wisdom it has been guided by that always eluded me. I can make the case for this all being an adaptation. I imagine it falling away, like so many other forms of self protection that no longer serve me that I have learned to slowly shed.
Sometimes it feels like fire, sometimes a swarm of bees, like I’m in a room with the wrong amount of gravity, like there’s a layer between me and everything else, like there’s a rope twisted through the left side of my body.
Coming up with these analogies does nothing “tangibly” productive toward “solving” my illness. But when you stay in the solving mode 24/7 you begin to burn out. I did burn out. When people who aren’t sick, or who aren’t in your body tell you to take a break- there is no way to listen to them.
“If you understood what was happening inside me you would understand this is urgent and desperate and you would not tell me to take a break.”
But this where something akin to spirituality, or maybe just creativity, maybe self compassion, has helped fill the space between science and my human limitations.
Creatively interpretting both your symptoms and your emotions (which live in your body as well) is there for you in the moments when you MUST tolerate the uncertainty and the waiting. When there is nothing else productive to do. It can offer you rest as well as new insight. An alternative to worry. Another tool in your tool box. And once you have practiced it, it has ways of making your symptoms a smidge less alarming (to me anyway)
They are still there and they still hurt, but I am not combatting them so much. I am not at war with them every moment.
I let them happen to me and let them effect me and take note. Like an artist instead of a patient. Like a person whose experience matters right now in this very moment, not just later, not just when I am “fixed.”
This is a marathon for most of us. Try to swim seamlessly between fighting to feel better and learning the cold hard facts, and staying the present moment because your life right now matters too. Embracing your live in the now probably looks different than how it did when you weren’t sick (if you weren’t) or when you were in denial about being sick (like me.)
But start with just noticing. Compare your bodily sensation to something in nature- what does the ocean in you look like today? How rocky are the seas? Physical and mental illness takes so much from us. This is something it can give us - a super power that can be applied to your difficult emotions forever that lets you learn from your experience instead of fighting it, on the days when you are out of fight.
Where can you go from there? <3
