Dear Stress

(Somewhere, 2014)

There’s an ongoing ache down the left side of my neck, and I think to myself, Is this psychosomatic pain? Refer to YouTube and WebMD, an article or two on Livestrong about fibromyalgia. I should probably stop searching for all the things wrong with me I likely would live unaware of if I just took a nap, enjoyed several episodes of No Reservations, and shrugged off this generationally iconic dependence on Wi-Fi. I don’t have fibromyalgia, weird news is full of shit about “early onset amnesia” (really a rare variant of Alzheimer’s that occurs in young adulthood. A young bride in Australia supposedly had this condition), and my supervisor in college was right to tell me that I was full of shit when I’d muse and pace over fatal meningitis. Well, I wouldn’t have to come to work tomorrow!

There was a time when I was truly sickly. January of my sophomore year of high school marked the first of a series of presses down the abdomen, following the flicker of a tiny light, chasing an index finger of a doctor ruling out all these possibilities. I had just recovered from an awful flu, several stomach infections prior. I don’t know exactly what primarily factored into the vomiting, pain, the facility to bruise, even weeks after the big infection. My head spun, I still went to track practice, persevered in my shitty eating habits to include baked potatoes topped golden with processed cheese. I’ve only recently gotten over what I guess doctors call post viral fatigue syndrome.

College was a better time, I’d say because of my naive decision to take out some loans to sleep in a dorm forty minutes from home and five minutes away from the university library. Of course I regret this now although I do think I would have gotten sicker, possibly not even breathing as of today, but we’ll discuss this later. The hanging mobile of mixed messages and expectations incongruent with why I was even at this place was tucked away, however temporarily. And it was taken to hang every Christmas, every summer, these clown-like trinkets saying “You’ll never be” no matter the season. Until recently.

So one would think that I have gotten over the bullshit enough to grab at the clowns and shatter them whole. Two days ago I had a brief conversation with someone about how the past and bad experiences affect us more than we like to think. She was never sexually abused, not even physically abused, but was neglected more so, brought to bars by her alcoholic mother, entertained by little else but slurred altercations she remembers vividly. Mom got sick, daughter became caretaker, roles reversed for several decades. Then she became sick.

I guess I’m grasping for a connection in that I spotted some parallels. I’m twenty-three years old. I’ve already been told I have high cholesterol and high blood pressure. It’s important to note that my weight shifts between 98 and 105 pounds. Thin’s not always healthy. I regularly experience chest pain to where I fear situations with the potential to ignite rage from initial annoyance. It’s another one of those things I need to work on. We can take a drive through one of the two large city highway loops, and I could tell you of all these scenarios and reactions modeled before me from the age of three. But maybe I shouldn’t. The excuses from the mobile need dismantling. The how of that process? It will take a while.

And this is my problem. I think and hope and chance that some specialist can take it all away and I’ll just forget. The more I dwell, the tenser I get, the sicker I feel, the dizzier the weeks that pass and fade from a selectively good memory that lately, has grown complacent.

We can start with simple things, perhaps. Like ceasing to fret over things that I can’t be sure will happen.

Everything, but nothing.