“Well look-ey here isn’t this embarrassing?” Another failed commitment to write everyday for 30 days..It’s been a full 15 days of no writing.
In my defense, I have once again not been feeling so great. I’ve had a full bloom of symptoms pop up affecting what feels to be my intestines, bowel, chest and back.
A formless, shapeless pain that seems to undulate and slither around inside me, whispering to my fragile psyche about tales of imminent doom, projecting pictures of myself in hospital beds, surrounded by my loved ones and resigning me to my bed, having diagnosed me with all sorts of google-able diseases before I’ve even entered a doctor’s office. This is the life of one afflicted by health anxiety.
I often wonder at how this condition first developed, but it seems if I really hone in on it there is a singular memory that resurfaces time and time again. I must have been around the age of ten when my grandfather was diagnosed with this rare form of cancer: cancer of the peritoneum. It took his life after only 3-4 months. Soon after my maternal grandfather was also given a diagnosis of cancer. Colon cancer, he would battle it for a few years before going on to live to a ripe old age. However during those first years I remember distinctly standing in doorways watching my parents weep, feeling totally unable to take the weight off the situation. Feeling absolutely helpless, I seemed to sponge up the misery of loss.
It felt like a loss of innocence in the garden of eden. It was as if a veil of invulnerability had been cast off my nuclear family, when a witch’s spell struck me with a heavy dose of reality. This sense of dread forever flirtatiously circling on the borders of my mind, patrolling the perimeter for an opening in my defenses whenever I encountered hardships in my life. Time and time again, I pointlessly try to consider the origins of my pain. Is this stress or am I really dying from some form of cancer today?
The wealth of literature online about healthy anxiety, IBS, IBD, and all sorts often feels pessimistic and singularly hopeless. It can feel like there are very few tools to combat this insidious foe, but I need to remember that an archival record of symptoms and events helps to materialize this enemy. A pattern emerges and from this rain of symptoms, my old enemy takes shape and I am able to recognize it for what it is. Writing about it is one of the most powerful tools in my arsenal but so often I forget I even possess this humble little dagger. Writing is the net that is cast off into my shadow, briefly capturing the creature responsible for my debilitating worries, and if only for a moment, I might have some rest on these temporal islands in the rolling seas of stress.
