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All wrong

By August 15, 2010Myth or Reality

Yesterday morning nothing felt right.

It really started about 1/4 of the way through my rollerblade. My right hip felt like it was up by my shoulder. My legs were kind of numb. My lungs burned. My breathing was out of sync. My heart felt like it was wrapped so heavily in gauze that feelings of any sort were cripplingly muffled. My neck felt like it was sporting a croquet ball just left of that boney lump at the bottom of the cervical spine. My ears felt like they were stuffed with tube socks. The air didn’t feel soft on my face, it was just…irritating.

Everything was irritating. I wanted bed. I wanted to climb out of my skin.

I could nap, and did. I couldn’t climb out of my skin, but I scrubbed it pretty hard in the shower. And I made an appointment with my chiropractor.

Still, as I write this 32 hours later, I feel so out of whack, so disjointed, so off-kilter that I’m surprised I can walk in a straight line.

The annoying part is that there is no reason for this to happen. I didn’t do anything bodily to throw myself out of alignment. I didn’t fall, I didn’t bang into any foreign objects, I didn’t do any activity that I don’t normally do.

You must know by now that I’m a firm believer in the physical/emotional/mental connection. So, I started looking into the unphysical spots to see if I could make everything that was wrong feel right-er. But, I couldn’t really find a thing wrong in my heart or head, either.

Everything’s ticking along quite nicely. Of course I have stress and worry, but it’s the same stress and worry that I usually have, maybe even less.

Maybe even less.

You know, I wouldn’t put it past me to react to everything going so well by completely falling apart. Maybe my neck hurts because I’m constantly swooping my head around to look over my shoulder, searching for the tragedy that must surely be about to strike.

So, like any good writer, I’ve taken to concocting terrible, horrible stories in my head. I’m nothing if not preemptive. I self-disparage so that I can say bad things about myself before anyone else, for Pete’s sake. This is a long-honed skill. As such, when I was in the City last week, part of the severely annoying taxi TV loop included a segment about melanoma. I saw it so many times over the course of the 48 hours I was there, I was convinced it was a message. From God.

Mind you, right after the disease bit came the three NYC-themed Jeopardy questions (complete with ATD (Alex Trebek Delivery)) that I had the pleasure of watching just as many times, and it never occurred to me that God was telling me I should try out for America’s favorite game show.

Aha! The classic blueprint of how a mind looking for devastation works.

From the depths of my fabricated despair, it occurred to me that though I was playing the role of the victim perfectly, it was completely unnecessary. I could, really I could, sit right down at this computer, take my own advice and write the story the way I really want it to go and believe I deserve to live it.

Maybe I’m mourning the fact that I might never know heartache again. It’s been a companion for so, so long. The pain—it makes me feel so…alive. It gives me something to fight against, I like fighting. And it (pain) hasn’t been hanging around much lately. So I worry: What if happiness kills me? or What if loves walks away? or What if I do have a horrid, terminal disease? or What if I lose all of my work tomorrow and my career crashes into the shitter?

I’m so good at this! (So good I even used a detested exclamation point. For emphasis.) I’ve brilliantly replaced the irritating feeling that I’ve had lately with a hefty serving of the depression blah’s and a side of greasy anxiety. And that, my friends, is a much more comfortable and aligned and familiar state for this writer.

For now.

But I’m going to work damn hard at making it feel all wrong.

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Image credit: nickwheelroz

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