Let’s Begin. Again.

/ Michelle at The Green Study / 19 Comments
White cherry blossom on branch in spring.

I’ve written 20 partial posts and deleted them all. My world got smaller as my health deteriorated over the last year. Cognitively, I’m playing catch up and while I can recite what my oxygen levels have been for the last week, I can’t remember a single line of poetry, except for a little Wordsworth:

I wandered lonely as a cloud.

Perhaps I return here because I feel a peculiar kind of loneliness. There is an isolation borne of chronic health conditions. I feel myself tense up when someone asks How are you? So tired of focusing on my health and ongoing issues, I’ve learned to mutter I’m fine.

I’m not fine, but I’m okay. And what is going on with me is survivable, so perhaps there is no need for a dramatic re-entry into my life. You were gone?

Red robot figure fixing itself.

The tumbling down started last year when frequent hot flashes, cognitive fog, and insomnia started. Hormones, amiright? By the time I went the HRT route and got those symptoms under control, I got hit with tinnitus – a loud, high squeal at about 8000 Hz, sometimes manic cicadas, but always on. I went through some cognitive behavioral therapy to learn how to background the noise, and to learn how to sleep and work with it. Got that under control. Then got diagnosed with sleep apnea. I’ve spent the last month getting intimate with a breath robot (CPAP therapy).

If you read this and think holy shit, this person is a mess, I would swear to you that up until last year, I felt pretty okay. My chief indicators that I’m doing alright in my life have always been writing and running. If I’m doing those two things, I’m alright. They are activities layered in dust now. I finally started strength training again last week, but I’ve lost a lot of ground. And, as you can read here, my writing isn’t exactly hitting a bestselling list anytime soon.

Paper doll cutouts on a turquoise background.

Whatever image one might have of oneself, there will be a time when all will be brought into question. I’ve been humbled and demoralized. On the upside, I’ve gained greater empathy for people who suffer much more than I with isolating conditions and visible/invisible disabilities. That’s how it always goes – we don’t often feel in our bones for other people until we suffer ourselves. Humans, geesh.

For me there is only this: Begin again. And again. And again. I am adapting to the new guidelines and rules in my life that keep me sane and healthy, as most of us do. I’m going for a short run tomorrow and writing here. It’s a bit lumpy and unimpressive but life, like writing, is always a draft in revision.

A Prayer from My Blasphemous Self

/ Michelle at The Green Study / 7 Comments

On veterans’ day in November, I went to get groceries and there was a giant crane in the middle of the grocery store parking lot with a Hulk-sized American flag hanging from it. A saggy flag presented in the tackiest way possible. In the store, there was a veterans’ breakfast with a live musician singing Jimmy Buffet covers, causing a migraine-inducing dissonance as the overhead PA music still played.

I am a veteran. I hate this shit so much. For years I would fix my smile when they say “thank you for your service”, as meaningless a reflex as the thoughts and prayers offered up for dead school children. Now I tend to keep it to myself. If they’d ask, they would have learned that I spent most of my military service in Germany standing outside the motor pool smoking my Lord cigarettes or standing out in the woods on guard duty with my M16 having a smoke (man, I miss smoking).

I didn’t used to be this way. As a 17-year old Army recruit, I believed in god, guns, and country. My eyes would well up whenever I heard “America, the Beautiful”, my heart would swell just a little during “The Star-Spangled Banner”. But the Army took care of that. It taught me that authoritarianism didn’t care for the likes of me, as a person or a woman. I got meaner and tougher, but not wiser. I learned to speak the language of ass-kicking to cover up the fact that as a human I was diminished. By the end of my enlistment, I’d rejected the arrogance of hegemony, the fetishism of weapons, posturing machismo, and conservatism.

A black cat painted in Egyptian style.

Religion didn’t survive my twenties either. The final nail after a decade of doubts was a course in Middle East history. The Egyptian rulers changed gods to serve their political purposes. It hit me that religion was comprised of fictional narratives constructed by imperfect men. Through this lens, everything made sense to me. All the othering of women, the constant threats of a fiery hell – it was a narrative told entirely for the benefit of a dominant few.

Raised and baptized as a Seventh-Day Adventist, I was a kid who knew the King James Bible inside and out. I prayed for my stepfather to stay sober. I prayed that I would get new shoes. I prayed that the Second Coming/Rapture would not leave me behind. But the more I learned of and experienced the suffering of the world, the more difficult I found it to believe that some god would stand by and allow for this. It didn’t make sense to me and still doesn’t. As an aside, I don’t like the representatives of atheism either – they carry the same whiffs of misogyny and arrogance as any religion.

A green silhouette of a woman reading a book under a tree with birds flying above.

Since I look like I’d ask for the manager or make 911 calls on people living while black, and I know how to cook a Sunday hot dish as well as anybody, I live in a world where I’m passing. Because people will say all manner of things if they think you’re one of their kind. Sometimes the assumptions are too much and I quietly say it all aloud. Not Christian. Not patriotic. Hate guns. Your opinion is not supported by evidence. I want a world where everyone can be who they are AND be treated with decency and kindness. And this isn’t to say I’m egalitarian AF and everyone is my friend. I have no patience for incurious people and I’m an introspective introvert. I’m not going to join a club. And after this post, I’ll likely not be invited.

I think about that phrase modeling behavior everyday. In the Army, it was lead by example. What expectations do I have of myself? How do I want to be in the world? What am I leaving in my wake? How can I talk compassion and kindness when I’m often all for silence and solitude?

Like most humans, I’m a walking contradiction. Knowing this serves as a reminder to me that everyone else is too. Perhaps this is how we change the world – by not defining each other through the lens of a single characteristic or belief or exchange. The public discourse has gotten so lazy and vitriolic that we see each other in shorthand, with labels. I have to challenge myself constantly to re-frame, re-frame, re-frame when my knee jerk reaction is to see someone in caricature. I screw up, I start over, I ask questions. It’s redemption without the dogmatism.

A picture of the planet earth from space.

We live on this planet together even though we spend a whole lot of energy pretending we don’t, pretending that we won’t all suffer from our aggregate destruction of earth. So today like every other day, I start over again. With curiosity. With humility. With the idea that there is so much more to learn. With the belief that I don’t really know you, so I need to listen. With the understanding that I am not always correct, always kind, always compassionate. But I will try to be better at it. This is my prayer, my salute, my warrior stance, my supplication…

Ringing in the New Year

/ Michelle at The Green Study / 18 Comments
Rose-breasted grosbeak bird sitting on evergreen branches with bells hanging below.

This would not be the post I intended to write a couple of weeks ago. A few days before the new year, I began to have a high-pitched ringing in my ears. I couldn’t get in to see my assigned doctor for 3 weeks, so after a couple of torturous nights, I went to urgent care. Urgent care is now America’s primary care system. Americans get a taste of both worlds: the wait of socialist medicine with capitalist pricing.

Woman plugging her ears with look of distress as bells ring next to her ears.

After being shepherded into a room to sit for an hour, I began to cry. The squealing is loudest in quiet places. With no sleep and no escape, despair took over. After five minutes of conversation with a PA, a look in my ears, I walked out with two prescriptions for an ear infection. After completing treatment with a steroid, my loud ringing continues 24/7 unabated and I’ve learned that I should never take steroids. 

Between me and Dr. Google, PubMed, and 5,000 reddit forums, I may have this for days or forever. Tinnitus is no joke. It can drive you off the deep end. For someone like me, who values silence and chooses to spend a lot of time in it, I am a prime candidate for going completely doolally. There have been moments when the thought of never knowing silence again has terrified me.

I’m nothing if not a monster proponent of true self-care. The on-again, off-again skills of self maintenance are now my lifeline. Being outside, moving, meditating, eating relatively healthy, talking to my people, and taking things moment by moment are going to be my jam for the foreseeable future. I found an ENT to see in a few weeks. I will run the medical obstacle course to ensure I’ve done what I can (short of taking anxiety-magnifying insomnia-inducing steroids again).

I have also learned that 50-60 million people in the United States have some degree of tinnitus and that shysters are waiting for those desperate souls. There are exorbitant supplements, electrical stimulators, expensive sound training programs, and lots of drugs that people are trying. There is no known cure. At this point, I’ve gone in for Melatonin since I’ve not habituated enough to the squeal of manic crickets to sleep much. I’ve also downloaded soundscape apps to learn how to distract from or mask the sound a little better.

Black and white cat draped over a book.

It has been a reminder of the frailty and changeability of our human bodies. I’ve taken to writing journal notes every day that includes a list of all the things I’m grateful for and while it makes it sound as if I’ve already gone doolally, I’m grateful for the chance to learn more empathy. Whether my condition is permanent or temporary, it’s invisible to anyone outside of my brain. We watch and judge each other as we move through our days, angering at the person who is taking too long in the checkout lane or mocking people who have support animals. We don’t know what it has taken to get them there and kindness is free.

Most of us are just getting by the best we can. Things are difficult these days – from the barrage of information to the fractured communities that lay all around us. Help each other out, not just by showing up for the trauma, but by treating everyday interactions as an opportunity to be more capably kind. We can be more than our worst stories, our worst selves, our stupid politics, and our distractible, temporary thoughts. I can be more than the high-pitched shrieking in my brain would ostensibly allow. Within our frailties, we can often find our greatest strengths. Somebody has that embroidered on a pillow somewhere. On which, amidst the soundscape in my brain, I will lay my head to rest.

Some things that have given me comfort of late:

Three black and white sheep in a purple background of meadow, sky, and moon.
  • Lavender Wrap – This was an expensive luxury, but has lasted for years. Lately, I heat it up in the microwave each night and wrap it around my shoulders up to my ears to relieve the tension headache from having noise 24/7.
  • Vick’s Vapor Rub – Reminds me of my childhood and keeps me breathing easy at night.
  • Melatonin – This has been a lifesaver. I finally landed on a brand and time release formula that has allowed me to sleep through the cacophony of crickets.
  • MyNoise sound app – Free, ad-free app for both iOS and Android. Full of adjustable nature sounds that help distract from the piercing noise. I use the sound of water while reading and writing and have been sleeping to the sound of wind. Soothing sounds can retrain the brain to put the squeal in the background.
  • I’m currently reading Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s World of Wonders. Short essays built around the natural wonders of our world.

What gives you comfort in times of stress?