Category: health

  • The Body Keeps Score

    Trigger Warning: effects of extreme domestic violence discussed

    You know, it’s only been in about the last year and a half that I realized that that version of me, in that picture below, had actually saved someone’s life, in realtime, about a year and a half or so prior to this photograph.

    Just like November’s are hard, February’s are hard for an entirely different reason.

    I had an awful dream last night. I dreamed that someone I love very much wanted to kill me, and had already killed someone else I love. I spent a good deal of that dream attempting to hide, always to be found. I woke up before anything actually happened to me.

    And I thought it was an odd dream to have, and then I realized that today is February 2.

    The body keeps score. My subconscious knew exactly what time of year this is.

    And the reality is, I lead a remarkably privileged life. We have a nice home, we can pay our bills, Jared has a phenomenal job, my children are getting world-class educations. I have great friends and even as an adult I am still spoiled rotten by my family.

    And still….. the body keeps score.

    Tomorrow February 3, will be the 25th anniversary of one of the most horrific days of my life.

    In the journal in the photo below, there is a gap between January 4, 2001 and March 26, 2001.

    I’m sure I didn’t think much about why I wasn’t writing at the time.

    And it wasn’t until about a year ago that I really started to shuffle through that old journal of mine with a different kind of analysis than I’d ever done before, to see exactly what was going through my mind, looking at my brain as a young 20-something through the eyes of my mid-40’s self.

    I bought that journal with the boyfriend of the time’s encouragement. He knew I had kept journals throughout my childhood and into high school, and he took me to Borders and probably paid for it.

    There are only 2-3 entries before that January to March gap.

    But, those entries held just enough information to tell him, when he probably read it, exactly where he was standing in my headspace despite the fact that we lived together at the time.

    I’ve always been a very transparent writer. It’s just who I am; it’s how I process the world.

    And so, when I decided I wanted to go out on a date with someone else on February 3, 2001, I knew for a fact it was going to be a messy thing. I knew the man I lived with— the man who had claimed me as his own for six years at that point— the man who had known all along that I’d long been involved with some guy who was now an attorney in another state for over two years at that point— I knew he wouldn’t take it well; I knew that I was beholden to him for half the rent of our two-bedroom apartment in a very nice neighborhood in Toco Hills.

    I knew I had to break up with him for the millionth time.

    I had zero, zero idea that the breakup would stick this go-round for very different reasons than it ever had before.

    As traumatic as my college years were on a variety of fronts, there is only one week to which I am aware of in which my actual life was in danger, and that was the week between Saturday, February 3, 2001 and Saturday, February 10, 2001: the week between a blade and a door locked in the dark.

    And the police were involved, and the officer told the boyfriend that no judge would take my word for anything if the other party decided to press charges against the boyfriend.

    Which is why, when something arguably more sinister— a psychiatrist called it psychological torture in 2022— when something more sinister happened a week later, it didn’t even occur to me to contact the authorities. I was sure I was going to die that night of February 10, 2001, but the gravity of what exactly occurred didn’t occur to me at all until years and years later.

    I just called my parents the next day, while the boyfriend was at work, and told them I needed the rest of the rent money; that I wanted to see other people and the boyfriend was being “unreasonable.”

    So yeah, that dream from last night didn’t make a great deal of sense until I stopped to really think, and remembered, “oh yes, it is February.”

    The body keeps score. My brain— this brain of mine that ruminates so very much, still processing probably three lifetime’s worth of trauma, keeps score.

    And I write. To this day; I am terrified of this individual. Much like another individual I faced in the last year, I faced this person in person first probably 13 or so years ago as a tolerance exercise. I have solid reasons to know in my brain I am likely safe from him for a variety of reasons due to his likely current circumstances. But on some level I am always afraid he’ll show up at my house. I sleep with the lights off out of a type of forced exposure therapy now but for so much of our married lives, Jared and I have slept with the lights on such that our children grew up sleeping with the lights on even. He is not the only reason I am afraid of every man I meet, but he’s one of the bigger reasons.

    And today, my puppy Abby is getting her mouth, probably long overdue, seen about. And Jared, upon hearing what anniversary it is, and, taking pity on me for my poor toe that seems to not want to heal yet, came home in the middle of this morning to take the trash to the street for me.

    And I dragged my camera out of my bag— this camera I have been avoiding for weeks because I do that when I am hiding, and I found the photo of myself from probably late 2002, taken probably by this really great guy I dated for a while before Jared came along. And I found the journal only for the photo but this is not the time of year for dissecting it, just now.

    And today’s agenda is to work on the jute bag I started, and to hold my camera even though I don’t feel much like taking pictures, and to remember that today is 2026, not 2001.

  • Facing a Fear: I Did It

    I do not like dealing with my toenails. At all.

    When I was a little girl, my Mama had to hold me down to let them cut my toenails.

    It was bad. Really.

    The issue is compounded by the fact that with the scoliosis and spinal fusion, I actually can’t get to my toes super well at all. I can cut my own toenails as an adult, but it is not the easiest thing in the world.

    So when my big left toenail became fungal three years ago, I was filled with a sort of existential dread.

    And immediately, within the month, I went to a podiatrist, who promptly told me it didn’t look like a typical fungus and that I should come back in a year if it was giving me trouble.

    Three years later, it had mostly stopped growing the entirety of those three years and it was clear it was indeed a fungal infection.

    So last September, I faced it and went to the podiatrist, sure they would remove it that very day.

    Turns out podiatrist offices don’t work that way.

    She gave me some ketoconazole and told me to use it and Vicks and she didn’t know how long it would take to clear up; when I mentioned removal she said it was an option.

    Then in December when I mentioned the whole episode to my dermatologist at my appointment there, she said that the ketoconazole was going to do nothing, and gave me some weird enamel paint stuff that made my nail hard and told me to file it weekly.

    That stuff took away permanently any hope of actually cutting my toenails, and actually, for some reason the toenail started growing into the base of my toenail bed, backwards.

    And the backwards growth was what promptly sent me back to the podiatrist last week, begging to have the whole thing just taken off permanently.

    Which is no small thing, because of that whole fear of people messing with my toenails.

    And in fact, the fear is so bad that one of my greatest all-time primal fears ever has ever been someone prying off my toenails.

    So yesterday, as I sat just after having my left big toe injected with local anesthetic to deaden it, I posted this on Facebook:

    “So one of my most primal fears is having my toenails, specifically my big toenails, pried off. No joke, in the midst of the only time I had to be restrained due to psychiatric reasons, the delusion of the day was that they were restraining me to pry my big toenails off.

    So what am I sitting in the podiatrist’s chair waiting on? To have my left big toenail removed, permanently.

    It’s been fungal for at least 3 years but it has given me trouble with ingrown issues since I was a child.

    I am ecastatic it will be gone permanently, and not worried about the cosmetics, and I guess technically today is an achievement and exercise in facing one of my worst fears, all by myself since Jared is at work.

    And the dr says I made it through the worst part, which was the deadening injections.

    And I can go shopping for stuff for the weekend’s weather, too.

    I don’t normally keep my phone with me during Dr appts but she said it was fine for distracting myself.”

    The doctor said afterward, with my having told her about the fear, and told her nurse about the fear, beforehand, that she’d made sure she deadened it well and made sure to let it sit long enough to for sure be effective because she really didn’t want to have to come back in and poke me with a needle again after having hurt me with the procedure.

    But sure enough, the procedure itself took like 5 minutes, maybe 10 max, and it was not bad at all. I took a photo I will spare the world after, in fact– you know, with photography being my coping mechanism for everything and all– of the exposed toe bed before it got wrapped up in the bandage post procedure. I’d taken a photo of it before the procedure started, too, for posterity.

    And pretty much the rest of my whole morning and yesterday during the day was set up for success, because I’d done the very thing I was afraid of most as a child, probably. And that’s saying something considering they cut me open on front and back and messed with my innards in a very dramatic fashion for that scoliosis surgery.

  • Randomness

    You know what? I sure have missed writing.

    Also, randomness: I’m pretty darn good at Russian on Duolingo. Apparently there were hidden subconscious benefits to spending a good amount of time in my toddler years in a college language lab, as Russian, Greek, and Spanish are all fairly intuitive in addition to the French I did actually study.

    And, there’s a new job to get ready for, and I am glad.

    And it’s nearly tax season, and I am glad about that, too.

    But, it’s bedtime. And with said job on the horizon, routine is becoming super-duper important.

    And apparently my back is really messed up. I don’t know why my spine is a corkscrew, but it is.

    Poor Abby has to have a dental on February 2; she has an infection in her mouth and will have to have several teeth pulled too. I guess that comes from us not brushing her teeth– sorry girl. She’s been a trooper but we finally got her to the vet today. I am so thankful my therapy dog only has to have a dental and it was nothing worse to worry about. I was afraid she had kidney issues.

    Aside from the trip to the vet, it was a good day.

    I’m thankful to be getting back into the headspace that I can concentrate on writing. It’s been a long winter and I am grateful that the fictionalized memoir is still a project on the horizon. It may take me a decade to write, but will be well-worth it.

  • On The Bus

    I’ve been on the struggle bus for a while now.

    For years and years, actually.

    Jared is the one who named it the “struggle bus.” 

    This winter is actually slightly more bearable because of the shears in the house. 

    Light helps.

    And even though I am on the struggle bus, there are small mercies.

    A new job.

    A fun New Year’s Eve.

    New tires on my car that make it formidable in the rain.

    Mastering the French pin up-do.

    Figuring out that why yes, I can live without cheese in my life. And be happier for it.

    Figuring out that why yes, I can be happier without some people in my life, too.

    Figuring out that even life without the GFX is pretty darn great. 

    My hair is growing. It’s longer now than it’s been in probably 11 years or so. I forgot that when it gets to a certain length, the ends in the front underneath get curly on their own. Completely forgot that at all. It’s well on its way to being as long as it was on the 404 page.

    And there is terror, and I haven’t been writing.

    It’s mostly been survival mode.

    There are new routines with the new year, and the future is bright. 

    Maybe life is the struggle bus.

    It’s a pretty darn wild ride.

    There is hope. At least I’m on the bus.

  • French Hair Pins, Glycerin Soap, and Bean Boots

    It’s been a couple of days’ worth of introspection.

    I do a lot of introspection and navel-gazing; it’s been my life’s work anyway to try to stabilize myself.

    Last February or March, I got a wild hair to use glycerin soap as shampoo and at the time, I used a Mixed Chicks leave-in conditioner that I found at Publix. I chose it because it was a relatively inexpensive leave-in conditioner. 

    As my mental health stabilized over the summer, I returned to products that I’d loved previously: My L’Oreal Pro Longer Conditioner occasionally, kept the Mixed Chicks, but returned to my cheap V05 shampoo alternating with my Trader Joe’s 3-in-1. 

    The fight with grease— and consumeristic (and brutally expensive and wasteful) beauty culture has been real. 

    Generally with the products I usually use, I cannot go a single day between washes. And my hair absolutely has got to be washed in the morning because it cannot withstand sleeping overnight to not be greasy in the morning even with a shower right before bed. 

    I know people think AI is evil incarnate. I am aware of this.

    What I also know is, I have used Gemini as a tool for self-care and random life-hack improvements for a little over a year.

    Last week I went into Ulta to see if I could buy another one of those Tangle Teezer brushes like J got me for Christmas. They were out, but they had these little french hair pins (well, the Ulta ones weren’t little) that intrigued me. My hair is getting to the length that I like to try to pull it up. I was aware that my hair isn’t quite long enough for the big ones yet, but I came home and found this on Amazon, and they arrived last night.

    So last night, I was poking around on Google and talking to Gemini about techniques to use them in my hair. 

    And that led me to talking about why in the world people don’t use these instead of the God-awful elastics that inevitably tear half my hair out and get lost and you have to buy a million of over a lifetime.

    And that led me to wondering how my grandparents and great-grandparents would have used to keep their hair clean. I was keenly aware that neither of my grandmothers struggled with the massive grease I did in their younger years, washing their hair only once a week often. My Mom’s mom did that in her elderly years even. I never knew Nannie to ever wash her hair more often than once a week and she went to the “beauty shop” to do so as long as she was physically able to, in fact, my whole life. 

    Turns out, apparently the glycerin soap I had experimented with last Spring was actually among the products that would have been used back in the day, before consumerism took over us all. 

    And last night before bed, I took a shower using glycerin soap all over including my hair, and I rinsed my hair using two teaspoons of vinegar in a cup of cool water, as Gemini instructed. 

    And having gotten a relaxing shower before bedtime, and feeling clean and not overly stripped of oils in my hair or skin, I woke up feeling fantastic. I didn’t need an alarm to wake up, I woke up rested, and I woke up ready to go straight out of the bed. I just washed my face, brushed my teeth, and got dressed and that was it. 

    And it remains to be seen how my hair will feel in the morning, but 24 hours later with having had my hair half-up most of the day, I can honestly say that my hair does not feel greasy. And more: apparently my natural hair, at least the underside of it that is exposed when it is half-up, when left to its own devices has this sort of wave to it that I tried desperately to get it to do with a curling iron for most of my teens and 20s and early 30s anyway. I just didn’t know it needed to not be stripped of its oils through consumeristic shampoos and conditioners. 

    I’m on a mission in 2026. I’ll be working through my guided journal, but also: I’m jumping off the consumer bandwagon as much as possible. Yes, hopefully it will save money. But I’m more interested in it saving my sanity.

    And if I can take my showers at night instead of in the morning, it will make sleep more relaxing which will make mood regulation better which will make life happier. 

    It didn’t exactly start with the hair pins…..it started with the hunt for boots since my beloved Aerosoles I have been wearing since February are falling apart.

    So 8-inch L.L. Bean Boots are on the way with the intention of them being my “forever” boots. 

    And the bronze metal French hair pins will last for as long as I have hair.

    And I am falling in love all over again with my 80mm GFX lens, which took this shot at Hobbs Farm tonight. 

    And for better or worse, the introspection and dialogue with Gemini about why so much of our culture resists a “buy it once” mentality led me to realize exactly how counter-cultural such a mentality really is.

    For instance: last March when I needed new glasses, I sent my old Warby Parker Holcomb glasses off through Costco to have new lenses put in them. I’ve worn them off and on all year.

    And instead of buying disposable soft contact lenses, I opted for rigid gas permeable contacts instead, because they would help me see better, I could more easily reuse them, and they were durable enough to last longer than a year. I now have two pair that I hope to have last at least 2.5 years.

    And when the flex spending rolls over, I am sending off my geometric Menin Zeelool (crazy) glasses through Costco to have my current prescription outfitted in them instead of buying new frames. 

    And while the Bean Boots are on the way, I did repair the Aerosoles and they’re likely not going anywhere for a good while. 

    But Gemini had a point: my great-grandmothers and my grandmothers in their youth would have purchased things that they knew would last, and would certainly not have gone shopping as “retail therapy.”

    That was not an option in the Great Depression for any of them. 

    And I am more fortunate and I do realize I have the luxury of introspection and the time to research into “buy it once” sorts of culture. And the education to sort out what really does need to be modern vs what, just maybe, people in the 1920s and 1930s did better than we do today, lifestyle-wise. 

    But dang it, I’m going to keep figuring it out.