Day 1 Part 2
Writing out the details of chronic pain and discomfort from chronic illness is helping me cope, ease resistance that usually only makes everything worse, and simply be present to accompany myself in my experience, as I would want to accompany a child in the same suffering.
I feel the internal tremors shaking in my abdomen more than ever, right in the center of my abdomen. I feel a desperation searching in abstract thoughts for solutions outside of me. I remember the comfort from last time I wrote, but I don’t know how to return to it. I feel too tired to even try to look for a way back. I have a sharp pain in the right side of my head. It feels like I don’t know how to calm down, but anyone looking at me would likely not guess that to be the case because I probably look half conscious. I feel half conscious. So much pain in my upper back and the pain in my head comes back into my awareness.
There is a familiarity in the voice that I write with, the words “comes back into my awareness” is somehow familiar as if it was outside of me, and it was comforting. A deep breath comes and I feel like something is melting off of my shoulders. I become aware of the tension in my neck and shoulders, even though my muscles are relaxed, something is holding with a tight grip. My upper back rests onto my middle back. The pain in my head gets my attention again. Pain in my neck joins it. Something is pushing outward from the inside of my chest. All together it feels overwhelming and I want to stop writing.
Just writing these words brings some space between the voice in me writing “overwhelmed” and the rest of me. Imagery comes to mind that there is just a small part of me that gets overwhelmed, and the rest of me all around it is just observing objectively, regardless of how it might feel. I’m also observing that the voice saying “I want to stop writing” clearly didn’t speak for all of me, and that creates space within too, with acute awareness that there are experiences and perspectives that are only part, not all. I feel something relax and sink inside my back, right up against or connected to my spine. A deep breath takes itself and it feels very satisfying, like a big gulp of water in the heat.
I feel the shaking suddenly very strong in the right side of my abdomen. It’s as if I’m looking down at it and I feel so different than when I first wrote about it. Even my posture changed from slouched to sitting upright to type.
I feel a pulse around the shaking. They seem to be feeding off each other: pulsing with the shaking, shaking with the pulsing. I feel it down through my legs and feet. Fear arises and a big breath breathes through a gripping in my chest and back. The exhale holds for a bit and a gentle inhale finally comes. My head is hurting and the words come to mind “it bothers me.” But it’s more like I’m observing the words, and it’s even a gentle expression that is not as desperate as before.
It’s only my second time writing out the experience and already I am wondering why I didn’t do this before. It is actually so helpful to write out and hear a narration of the experience; it seems to influence how my body and parts of me are able to cope and stay present with the experience.
A gentle but deeper breath comes. My shoulders feel tense even with my muscles relaxed, and they are hurting up into my neck and into the right side of my head. I’m still very aware of the gentle but bold breaths. They feel sturdy but not overpowering, like they reach into the ground.
I notice a desire to get away from the pain in my head. I offer it care, but the care feels very distant from my head, like it is down in my chest and its message doesn’t carry into my head.
There is emptiness, thoughtlessness with the pain in my head, and I’m going to take a minute to be with that, without words. A deeper breath comes. I’m looking at the sun hitting the leaves on the treetops right outside my window and find myself in a stare.
It was as if the pain was looking through my eyes, and it had to keep refocusing.
Empty of thoughts. It’s actually so nice to be empty of thoughts.
The leaves look like they are waving when the wind blows.
Day 1 Part 3
Numbness and disconnecting from self when socializing.
I have an incredible amount of pain in my head. I was talking on the phone and I get very numb to my body when I’m engaged in conversation sometimes. It can be a good distraction when I'm extremely uncomfortable, but it can also keep me from important signals I need to access in order to take care of myself.
Getting off the phone I feel my head throbbing, my neck is so tense and tight it feels like it could break in two.
I hear a bird outside and it lightens how I’m holding myself, like I’m remembering life can be light.
The side of my head feels heavy. I’m surprised I can hold it up. I almost feel like I’m clinging to my computer as I write this, because writing has been so resourceful to my experience moment to moment. I feel a happy sadness that feels like it’s sitting down at the bottom of my chest, and I get the image that my chest is hollow.
I feel some pain at the top of the left side of my head. The right side of my head feels full. Of what, I don’t know.
A big breath takes itself, and the rest of me welcomes this breath with relief. The expression comes to mind “phew, glad you’re here with us!”
I feel pain in the left side of my neck. I feel incapable of hold my neck correctly. Earlier I was moving with the trees as they swayed, but now I feel like moving my neck would break it. Some of these words sound so harsh, but there’s a relief in writing them. I didn’t know they were in me, but obviously I feel them. I want to know them and get to know them. Something feels like it’s holding up my ribcage. A breath takes itself. The right side of my head hurts and my right arm is starting to get uncomfortable. I feel my head and it empties again like before. I’m aware of my breath and it is gentle and subtle. I feel a full gentle breath take itself. Another fuller breath takes itself, and it feels very satisfying on the front of my chest, fuller than usual. I feel the pain in my neck and arm and my head is empty. Something in me loves the emptiness in my head. The thought comes that I was resisting the pain before, but embracing it brings something I always wanted, the thoughts to stop. A breath gets my attention and I follow it.
I see the leaves again almost as if they haven’t been there all along, even though I look at them between writing sentences.
When the thoughts empty out I feel like I have the awareness of a child, able to take in more details of my environment. It looks like the leaves are waving at me.
I found myself starting sentences and not finishing them, and feel what feels like a floor at the bottom of my head where my neck starts, but on the inside. It feels like tension is keeping the floor there. I feel a pull on my sinuses. I swallowed and became aware the floor is at or above my throat. My breaths are shallow but slow.
I sit with the pain in the right side of my head coming and going, the tension of this floor, and a stomach ache makes itself known. I feel nauseous. I go to the pain in my head and the emptiness and back to the nausea. A big breath takes itself. I feel I don’t want to feel the nausea so I invite the part of me not wanting to feel it to take up more space in my awareness with its presence. I feel a pulling at the base of my skull and a yawn comes. I become very aware of the pain in my head again. My shoulder feels pulled on by my arm. My stomach discomfort comes back but it feels more like a dull burning than nausea now. Pain in my head becomes stronger. Pain in my sinuses and pain my back come into my awareness. A strong urge arises to stop writing. Pain in my head gets stronger. I feel the pain with the sinus pressure and a breath takes itself. The leaves look like they’re waving again. I feel like a sick kid that can’t go outside to play, which I was many many times as a child. My stomach squeezes. A big deep breath takes itself.
My perception of the leaves switched from taunting to a reminder that I can go out to play someday. Another breath comes. I have a memory of looking outside with a longing to go outside and feel better. Immediately an invitation arises within me asking me not feel that’s how life always has to be. Sometimes I feel very alive no matter what I’m doing. It’s like an invitation came for this longing that has gone on for decades to meet with the vitality that can be present no matter what I’m doing or not doing. There is a sadness feeling them separately, but a newness and fresh hope in their getting closer to each other.
The nausea moves and feels very small compared to before. I see the leaves waving and feel a smile coming from the sides of my abdomen up through my chest and arms, but it doesn’t reach my face. I really like this smiling without my face. A curiosity comes about practicing feeling a smile without it being on my face. I have faked smiles on my face a lot of my life and probably still do without realizing it. I feel it again through my torso, a happiness as the trees wave. I see a seal’s flipper and a dog’s tail and an elephant’s ear in these leaves as they wave. Something opens in my back that I recognize from catching my breath when I was overwhelmed with a spontaneous moment of happiness as a kid.
A breath takes itself. I look forward to revisiting this over the next few days! I feel a bubbling up in my torso, openings in my back, and the pain in my head, all at the same time.