Tummyache

7/11/2022

Feeling super jumpy and weird. Like a void is about to take me in. Idk. Like anxious. But it’s SO FUCKING BORING to be anxious all the time, you know? Like… enough is enough.

Being anxious used to mean something. It used to mean something was happening, something good, something big, something interesting, something new, like ok I’m going to learn something I’m going to do something new I’m doing something exciting. But now it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a feeling. Useless, useless feeling. I wish I could wash it away, the way I wash my hands. I would put dish soap on my heart and my brain and scrub and let it slip and slide around in my hands, fingers poking in the aorta and IVC and SVC, spreading the sulci and the gyri until they were clean and light. And then I would run it under warm water cleaning out all their crevices, massaging them. And I would just let that anxiety go. I would just let it go. The void doesn’t belong here. The void takes up space and makes me feel like I don’t belong, but that’s false. It doesn’t belong. It’s not important, it’s not necessary, it’s not a part of this life anymore. Just let it go.

This weekend, I just felt so worthless. I was glued to my phone, damn black mirrored rectangle, I was glued to it and I hate it but I think I need it and I love it sometimes but mainly I hate it because it used to bring me joy and now it just brings me not even pain, something different than pain, something different from any feeling at all. Obligation and a tummyache that hurts so bad it goes down to my legs and into my lower back. Like a period cramp or gastritis. Maybe that’s all I’m feeling is gastritis, maybe I just need to take some Tums or drink some yogurt or something. Something kind to my tummy. Something to trust.

The tummy pain skews up my gut feeling you know? Like I trust my gut, but what does it mean when my gut hurts?

Well, maybe it doesn’t mean anything. It just means like… it hurts.

Maybe I need to drink more water, maybe that’s what it means. Or maybe it means like I need to take a shit or fart - let it go or let it out. Maybe it means I need to change my posture. Maybe that’s what it means. Maybe I just need to not think about it. Maybe that’s what it means.

Whatever it does or doesn’t mean, it’s hard to ignore it.

From the outside, it’s easy to see that everything in my life is perfect, just as it should be. A great family, an abundant, good, meaningful job, a lovely face, a lovely mind, a lovely body and lovely food and lovely friends from the ground up.

But my gut, my fucking gut, it hurts. Something, I need something. A sensation of something. Is that entitlement, I wonder? I just want something. A deep desire for what? I don’t know. I don’t know at all. I literally have no idea. To live in a picture? To live in a dream? True love, whatever that means? I don’t know what love is , I think. I don’t think love is in a picture though. Instagram’s been feeding me pretty lies and then I wonder why I feel so starved and gaslit.

Starving to live inside a picture--I wonder if that's why I want to travel. And if I was traveling with friends and family, I would be more cynical about my desire to travel, I'd wonder if it was just for a picture or two.

But to travel alone is different, I tell myself. It's self-discovery as much as it's world discovery. I never spent much time with just myself, getting to know her. When I last did, I drugged myself to oblivion, then had a panic attack. Talk about skewing up your gut feeling.

I know I need to travel, because I know I need to spend time with me, see how I react, to go, to do something else, something different, meet myself, show her new people, people who will undoubtedly be with their own scars and their own problems and their own hurts and their own way of hurting me. I need to see if there’s anyone out there who is as heartbroken, as loving, as loved feeling unloved, as scared about the future but still making their way forward, wondering and wandering, loving and lashing out. As young and as old, as spiritual and as practical as me, but in their own way. Someone who’s themselves, just like me. Someone with as much depth and as little knowledge and someone who understands that no one else needs to understand them. Maybe there’s someone out there holding space for me, and feeling the void consume them, the same way I’m holding space for someone and feeling the void consume me. I wonder if there’s someone out there for me. I wonder if I'd be there for me. I never really looked, I never really asked. I blame myself for that.

Maybe it's my phone, maybe it's jealousy. Maybe because Elly went to Spain and met Jaime and Karly went to Caracas and met Teddy, maybe I think that I'll find love or something like it out there because they did. Whatever it is, I wonder if I just haven’t been looking hard enough, maybe if I gave myself a chance, maybe if I tried, I would find what I’m looking for. Whatever it is.