(no subject)
It turns out I don't have some kind of exotic systemic disease. That's the good news. The bad news is that my mind is powerful enough to convince my body that I am dying, and to encourage it to replicate all symptoms. I never thought I'd be the kind of person to have panic attacks; I never understood them. I didn't understand how you could get out of control like that. Even when I was sixteen, with my precisely and strictly controlled vegetarian diet and routine of cereal, double espresso, run and read of Kerouac every Saturday, the flights my head took on my favourite stimulant (caffeine) never quite tipped itself into the madness that has tainted me over the past couple of weeks.
It's embarrassing, isn't it? To admit that while I had all the classic and vile symptoms of candida- an infected much derided by the Western medical canon- it was in fact just a compounded knot of stress that wreaked havoc throughout my body, not the malevolent gut-spiking spores I imagined. It started six weeks ago, when I pinched a nerve- (in Latin it's ugly- the vagus- in Japanese, it's beautiful- the 迷走神経、meisou-shinkei, which my dictionary breaks down as
迷 = astray/be perplexed/in doubt/lost/err/illusion
走 = run
神 = gods/mind/soul
経 = sutra/longitude/pass through/expire/warp
... which is a very poetic way to describe the source of hysteria. It's the nerve that causes squeamishness, fainting, nausea, bile production. Do you ever feel queasy when you have blood drawn from your veins? Or you see a surgeon performing a live operation on squishy muscle fibres, unstringing them like green beans? Imagine that feeling all day- imagine especially it flaring up every time you put something in your mouth and it slides down your gullet to flirt awkwardly with this errant nerve. It didn't occur to me before because the two points- my left elbow and just below my left rib- that felt so strange and awkward before didn't go off. So I spent a lot of yen having blood tests and x-rays to discover the curious source of my complete lack of appetite, my nausea, my headaches, my muscle pains and cramps. It is likely that the latter two are part of a vicious cycle; I don't eat, so my blood sugar dives painfully low and my body begins to digest itself. Beautiful. You would have thought with my recent unnecessary weight loss I could have worked that out. But food looks odd at the moment; like wood or indigestible matter. I look longingly at it but feel no desire to put it in my mouth- and when I do, hunger doesn't even strike. I finally eat it and it sticks in my stomach, refusing to budge.
The doctor I saw was much nicer and more thorough than most I have seen in Japan, but all he did was give me prescriptions (as yet unfilled) to increase my appetite. I went straight to my chiropractor, who continues to enthrall and annoy me in equal measures with his spirituality and insistence that all of my problems are psychosomatic. But whatever does he did, it worked. I am on the mend- and more importantly, no longer convinced that I cannot eat certain foods. On the contrary; the Fear I've had over the past few weeks drove me to eat meat for the first time in nine years. I'm not going back. I still have no desire to eat steak or a big ol' hunk of meat, but I see no reason to be so religiously uptight (read; kosher-strict) about avoiding meat if it's in something. It was last weekend, when I was- yet again- dizzy with hunger, and asked at a food festival, "Is there meat in it?" When they answered in the affirmative, I hesitated, and then thought- fuck it. I've since tried yakitori, fried chicken, lots of chicken soup and a thai pork stir fry. It still feels somewhat like I'm putting alien matter in my mouth- (you have to CHEW a lot more than with fish, for a start) but I'm getting there. Next up; a BLT.
So; with all the illness, I decided not to do the 100km hike. I'm angry at myself for getting so stressed that I missed out on something that I had spent four months training, exercising, preparing and shopping for. But I simply wasn't well, and my appetite still hasn't returned, so I would have probably fainted anyway.
I went up to the country to greet N after he'd finished. I made chicken soup, ran a bath, and waited. He messaged me and told me not to meet him in the genkan (Japanese hallway/door when you remove your shoes) because he felt so odd. He came in, eyes dazed, caked in mud from the sleet and hail. He sank into the bath like a traumatised child, barely able to speak with fatigue, protesting that I- on my knees in my sequinned cardigan- was too well dressed to bathe him, but I did so anyway. This is what I do; this is what I am good at. The only thing preventing me from having another attack on the train- with queasiness hitting its peak at Yudawara- was the thought of caring for someone else, to put my own narcissistic and ridiculous ailments aside and to concentrate on him. I bundled him up in a towel and wrapped him up in duvet, fed him rice porridge and chicken soup, massaged his calves in oil. I was the perfect nurse, minus the uniform. He protested that I didn't need to do all this, to treat him like a child; but there was more than a little appreciation for it. And suddenly I felt sane and calm again; I had purpose beyond my own niggling fears and stresses. I watched him sink into sleep, sweaty and bewildered after forty hours awake in drenched forests.
The next day was- in contrast to the days of the hike itself- beautifully sunny and hot. We bought yakitori, boiled peanuts, beer, fried chicken, salad and ice cream and rolled around in the grass with our spoils while the baseball team and their girlfriends, in high heels and hotpants, watched on. We went back home for a nap and delicious bouts of- what euphemism shall I use?- recreational procreation (ha).
It's hard to believe he's the same person as that cruelly distant guy in January, when I decided I'd had enough and couldn't bear to continue. He tells me constantly that I could do better, that I'd be better to stay away from him, but I couldn't. I couldn't bear to just be friends, and so I kick-started it again, just to see how it would go. Slowly, at first. Now he tells me he loves me relentlessly, helplessly, without expectation of reciprocation. I come away from our weekends together feeling wholly refreshed, but reluctant to peel myself away. We're going to find somewhere to live (!) when he moves to Tokyo in late July- a step that I should find intimidating, but strangely don't. When I hear of my peers getting married or having kids I am either mildly terrified or disgusted. This seems somehow different. The only danger, however, is that I am too good a nurse; I have a tendency to become a good little housewife and devote myself to domestic duties at the expense of the great wide world out there. I already spend my weekends not writing and exploring, but rather making the six hour round trip to see him. I am just hoping that if we live together I can cultivate a life outside of our relationship; that moving somewhere will allow me a big desk and enough space and light to think. I know I'm leaving my job in November, but what to do next? Before I met him I knew for sure I'd leave Tokyo; now he's made me reconsider what else I can do here. Truth be told I need a break from it. Japan convinces you that it's the only place in the world. A weekend in Seoul last month, close in both proximity and culture as Korea is, tickled my wanderlust something bad; I dream about backpacking through Vietnam and Laos in the summer but know I won't be able to get away. Think of the ￥ Sophie, think of the ￥...
It's embarrassing, isn't it? To admit that while I had all the classic and vile symptoms of candida- an infected much derided by the Western medical canon- it was in fact just a compounded knot of stress that wreaked havoc throughout my body, not the malevolent gut-spiking spores I imagined. It started six weeks ago, when I pinched a nerve- (in Latin it's ugly- the vagus- in Japanese, it's beautiful- the 迷走神経、meisou-shinkei, which my dictionary breaks down as
迷 = astray/be perplexed/in doubt/lost/err/illusion
走 = run
神 = gods/mind/soul
経 = sutra/longitude/pass through/expire/warp
... which is a very poetic way to describe the source of hysteria. It's the nerve that causes squeamishness, fainting, nausea, bile production. Do you ever feel queasy when you have blood drawn from your veins? Or you see a surgeon performing a live operation on squishy muscle fibres, unstringing them like green beans? Imagine that feeling all day- imagine especially it flaring up every time you put something in your mouth and it slides down your gullet to flirt awkwardly with this errant nerve. It didn't occur to me before because the two points- my left elbow and just below my left rib- that felt so strange and awkward before didn't go off. So I spent a lot of yen having blood tests and x-rays to discover the curious source of my complete lack of appetite, my nausea, my headaches, my muscle pains and cramps. It is likely that the latter two are part of a vicious cycle; I don't eat, so my blood sugar dives painfully low and my body begins to digest itself. Beautiful. You would have thought with my recent unnecessary weight loss I could have worked that out. But food looks odd at the moment; like wood or indigestible matter. I look longingly at it but feel no desire to put it in my mouth- and when I do, hunger doesn't even strike. I finally eat it and it sticks in my stomach, refusing to budge.
The doctor I saw was much nicer and more thorough than most I have seen in Japan, but all he did was give me prescriptions (as yet unfilled) to increase my appetite. I went straight to my chiropractor, who continues to enthrall and annoy me in equal measures with his spirituality and insistence that all of my problems are psychosomatic. But whatever does he did, it worked. I am on the mend- and more importantly, no longer convinced that I cannot eat certain foods. On the contrary; the Fear I've had over the past few weeks drove me to eat meat for the first time in nine years. I'm not going back. I still have no desire to eat steak or a big ol' hunk of meat, but I see no reason to be so religiously uptight (read; kosher-strict) about avoiding meat if it's in something. It was last weekend, when I was- yet again- dizzy with hunger, and asked at a food festival, "Is there meat in it?" When they answered in the affirmative, I hesitated, and then thought- fuck it. I've since tried yakitori, fried chicken, lots of chicken soup and a thai pork stir fry. It still feels somewhat like I'm putting alien matter in my mouth- (you have to CHEW a lot more than with fish, for a start) but I'm getting there. Next up; a BLT.
So; with all the illness, I decided not to do the 100km hike. I'm angry at myself for getting so stressed that I missed out on something that I had spent four months training, exercising, preparing and shopping for. But I simply wasn't well, and my appetite still hasn't returned, so I would have probably fainted anyway.
I went up to the country to greet N after he'd finished. I made chicken soup, ran a bath, and waited. He messaged me and told me not to meet him in the genkan (Japanese hallway/door when you remove your shoes) because he felt so odd. He came in, eyes dazed, caked in mud from the sleet and hail. He sank into the bath like a traumatised child, barely able to speak with fatigue, protesting that I- on my knees in my sequinned cardigan- was too well dressed to bathe him, but I did so anyway. This is what I do; this is what I am good at. The only thing preventing me from having another attack on the train- with queasiness hitting its peak at Yudawara- was the thought of caring for someone else, to put my own narcissistic and ridiculous ailments aside and to concentrate on him. I bundled him up in a towel and wrapped him up in duvet, fed him rice porridge and chicken soup, massaged his calves in oil. I was the perfect nurse, minus the uniform. He protested that I didn't need to do all this, to treat him like a child; but there was more than a little appreciation for it. And suddenly I felt sane and calm again; I had purpose beyond my own niggling fears and stresses. I watched him sink into sleep, sweaty and bewildered after forty hours awake in drenched forests.
The next day was- in contrast to the days of the hike itself- beautifully sunny and hot. We bought yakitori, boiled peanuts, beer, fried chicken, salad and ice cream and rolled around in the grass with our spoils while the baseball team and their girlfriends, in high heels and hotpants, watched on. We went back home for a nap and delicious bouts of- what euphemism shall I use?- recreational procreation (ha).
It's hard to believe he's the same person as that cruelly distant guy in January, when I decided I'd had enough and couldn't bear to continue. He tells me constantly that I could do better, that I'd be better to stay away from him, but I couldn't. I couldn't bear to just be friends, and so I kick-started it again, just to see how it would go. Slowly, at first. Now he tells me he loves me relentlessly, helplessly, without expectation of reciprocation. I come away from our weekends together feeling wholly refreshed, but reluctant to peel myself away. We're going to find somewhere to live (!) when he moves to Tokyo in late July- a step that I should find intimidating, but strangely don't. When I hear of my peers getting married or having kids I am either mildly terrified or disgusted. This seems somehow different. The only danger, however, is that I am too good a nurse; I have a tendency to become a good little housewife and devote myself to domestic duties at the expense of the great wide world out there. I already spend my weekends not writing and exploring, but rather making the six hour round trip to see him. I am just hoping that if we live together I can cultivate a life outside of our relationship; that moving somewhere will allow me a big desk and enough space and light to think. I know I'm leaving my job in November, but what to do next? Before I met him I knew for sure I'd leave Tokyo; now he's made me reconsider what else I can do here. Truth be told I need a break from it. Japan convinces you that it's the only place in the world. A weekend in Seoul last month, close in both proximity and culture as Korea is, tickled my wanderlust something bad; I dream about backpacking through Vietnam and Laos in the summer but know I won't be able to get away. Think of the ￥ Sophie, think of the ￥...