Wallowing


For seven years, all I’ve thrown at my disease is effort.

A few weeks before I turned thirty my rheumatologist and I were talking about stress and all the smaller ways they manifest; waking up not feeling fresh, migraines and headaches, stiff muscles, teeth grinding, jaw pain. What’s also called secondary pain; pain that isn’t explained by the diagnosis but is auxiliary to it. What would’ve been symptoms of stress are aggravated by the SpA.

Well anyway, where we landed was on why a lot of people exiting their twenties suddenly discover that throwing effort at a problem does not solve everything. Slogging is not always the solution. Because our bodies slowly run out of all those hormones and excess energy. And that no matter how much we try, sometimes throwing effort at a problem is counter-productive.

He talked about how there's a lot of merit in the not-solving of it. In finding a way to make the non-solving bearable and wait for the case to crack itself open.

I have found very little writing on pain that I like a lot, but my favourite BY FAR is by Meghan O’Rourke.

Well she talks about this pendulum that many like me swing on, where one extreme is effort and the other extreme is despair, and we keep swinging back and forth, back and forth. And I’ve been thinking that maybe I could sit inside the pain for a bit instead. Wallow in it, and see what that feels like. Wait for the case to crack itself open.

This is the most appropriate song I could find.

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