Embodied Symptoms of Chronic Conditions Part 3: Darkness and Desperation to Gentleness and Fear of Discomfort Releasing

Day 2

I haven’t wanted to write all day.  I don’t really want to now.  I’m sitting outside with pain around my ribcage that has not let up since I got out of bed.  My neck is tense and in pain.  I feel a scrunching sensation in my ribcage that makes me want to just curl up and do nothing. Which I tried. But curling up and doing nothing is so uncomfortable. 

I haven’t paid much attention to my neck pain today because it is such a familiar chronic pain that it is easy to tune out. But now as I begin to write it becomes “louder” than my ribcage pain in my awareness, way more intense.  I become aware of my breath, and I feel a pinch in my right lung. 

I hate to write down the recurring words that are often echoing in my head, but they’re here and they're loud: I just don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be living this, I don’t want to feel, I don’t want to exist.  

My head hurts around my eye and it’s the right side again. 

I don’t have the usual hope or optimism that writing will help anything.  The concept itself seems foreign to me right now. I feel the base of my skull on my neck as if it is congested, even though my actual sinuses are not congested.  I feel a sinking in my ribcage and a pulling on my neck.

I feel tired in my eyes and I would love to sleep this away.  

A breath comes. 

I notice it getting dark outside even though it’s the middle of the day because some darker clouds are rolling in.  I like it, it feels like it is matching what I feel more than the sun was. 

I somehow feel identified with this. It somehow relaxes everything. It makes all of this feel bigger than me, and somehow that’s comforting. 

My shoulders are in pain.  I look at the trees and feel the shadows among them, and feel the shadows in myself.  A breath takes itself and it feels easier.  My eyes blink slowly. 

Another breath comes and it feels soft.  I become aware of the contrast between the tension I started writing with and the softness of this moment.  

I don’t want to write anything else, I don’t want to interrupt the softness that is present now with the tension.

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Day 3

I feel like there were two different people writing yesterday and today. I don’t know what happens within me to make me feel as bad and pessimistic and helpless as yesterday.  I don’t know how to bridge the gap left in the story, why some things are so helpful one minute and not the next, or why I’m so much better today and can hardly relate with yesterday.  Maybe the more I write about chronic illness, the words will find a way.  

For now, what I do know is that the word “gentle” was present repeatedly in my mind last night, and it seemed like it arrived just to help me sleep.  Gentleness was so welcome.  It is very subtle and comforting and compassionate and helpful. It illuminates self-compassion that otherwise feels a little impossible or forced sometimes. It is an experience that facilitates observation and reflection of all these difficult, overwhelming feelings, and engenders the urge to be gentle with this being that is experiencing all of this overwhelming discomfort at one time. 

My breathing becomes soft and light, and I seem to naturally regard everything happening with a gentleness in these moments.  “Everything happening” today is neck pain and back pain and shoulder pain and stomach burning and lungs burning and nerves shaking with internal tremors.  

I sit with it all for a moment and breathe with this awareness.  Gentleness is lightening the impulse to feel dejected, to just want to distract myself from being present. It's lightening the heaviness of wondering what’s the point in dealing with any of this at all? 

I have a lot of discomfort in my sinuses, which I'm finding so fascinating to keep observing from a place of gentle awareness because I grew up with chronic sinus infections as a child, but have not had sinus issues in a very long time.  To allow myself time and space to feel the subtle experiences that come with sinus issues brings to light a recurring discomfort from my past that I did not have the capacity to fully experience when they were a norm of my developing years.  I’m feeling a sense of gratitude for having the capacity today to sit and be present as long as I have, to be able to maintain my awareness of these discomforts and familiarize myself with more detail of my past experience. Like accompanying myself as a child but in the present is helpful and insightful and healing to us both.  Something feels very right about it, whole and complete and full circle. 

I offer the gentleness I still feel available to my shaking nerves.  I'm finding it interesting again in this moment to observe the space created when I can do this even for a short time.  Usually if I’m busy and focused on something else, awareness of the shaking comes as an interruption to what I’m doing, and there is immediate fear of the shaking. Fear that it will get worse, never end, drive me crazy, picturing my grandmother shaking with Parkinson's Disease. But in this setting I can just observe it.  I feel a gentle curiosity creeping up, an awe.  It’s not a familiar experience for me to feel shaking and then suddenly curiosity arises. 

As I breathe and stay present with the experience, I even feel a greeting come from within me to the shaking.  Immediately I feel a bit of sadness follow the greeting. Sadness that I had not greeted the shaking before from a place of neutrality or curiosity, without hostility and resistance and rejection.  This contrast with my usual automatic response makes me aware that I have regarded it as a nuisance almost as if it is coming from outside of “me,” like “me” is separate from my body.  But it’s so clear to me in this moment that it is really in and part of my own body.  Of course I could have cognitively described that reality before, but I’m just now feeling that reality as real.  My back and shoulders just relaxed significantly with a comforting, downward, flowing motion, and a big breath came, helping my whole body adjust.  

My head just laid itself back onto the couch, and I become aware at how much my back pain has eased. I'm surprised, and hadn't noticed its process. The pain lasted all night and didn't not ease at all when I got out of bed today. 

My back starts to stretch itself as I acknowledge this release and improvement. Now I'm feeling pain in the side and back of my neck.  I offer it gentleness, and a slow deep breath comes. The breath feels very helpful. 

My back changes my whole posture and stretches itself again, and a yawn comes.  I love the stretching.  Before the stretching I was feeling so stiff, like if I moved at all I would just break into pieces. It continues to feel best to follow my breaths right now. Each breath is feeling like a massage in the back, center of my lungs.