How long can you tread water?
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| Underwater photography by the amazing Rafal Makiela |
I’m making the effort. My head’s above the surface… but there are days…. Days when, honestly, it would be easier to go under and stay under. Suck in water and sit at the bottom of the pool. Instead, I drown proof.
I’ve been fighting my body for as long as I can remember. Since I was a kid. But the last 6 years have been particularly challenging. 72 Months. 2190 Days. Some of those days I just want to raise the white flag.
I am a walking, talking bundle of symptoms. Every new doctor has a new theory. I suspect that many of their theories centre around me being a hypochondriacal fuck-nut. I’m not crazy. There are times when I just want to do my best Barbra Streisand and yell at the top of my lungs “I WON’T BE NUTS FOR YOU!!”
My mother says I’m “sensitive,” that I’m ‘in tune’ with my body. I’m pretty sure she says this, while inside, she wonders where the hell I came from. Migraines, Hypoglycemia, Peri-menopause, Hashimoto’s Disease, and Microvascular Angina. I am so tired of being tired. And when I’m this exhausted the bitter twins gang up on me: ennui and entropy. They make me want to sit… and eat ice cream.. and weep, instead of purposefully walking out into the fresh air. They turn me into a peevish sheep. I HATE being a peevish sheep! Meh.
And I know, I KNOW that I’m fighting symptoms that I really can’t control. People ask me how I am and, for the most part, I lie. Because they don’t want to know… not really. I don’t want to be the girl who whines, but she’s there inside me, just itching to get out. The thyroid crap and the peri-menopause alone can make a gal wiggy, but it’s the attending depression on the periphery, hiding just out of sight, that terrifies me. I lost 2 years of my life to it when I was in my 20s. I don’t ever want to go back.
So I sit up a little taller. I take in a breath. Sometimes I cry. I distract myself with the wonderful. And often, when another day has crept above the horizon – it’s better.