"how are you doing with... everything?"
a doctor's resident with great bedside manner - and yet, 6 words that escape, rarely sounding natural from anyone's mouth.
how do I tell this stranger exactly how I'm doing? that most days are filled with anxieties of the most minute kind - what if I get caught in the rain wearing Birkenstocks? what if I'm late for my counselling appointment and my counsellor finally says enough is enough, and never wants to see me again? what if I show up for my pottery class and no one talks to me and I know I'm there for the artistic expression but the 7 year old inside of me just wants a friend to laugh with? what if people have been lying to me and everyone is lying and even when I'm learning to ask straight forward and difficult questions, they. are. all. lying.
how do I tell this stranger that I'm both ecstatically happy and gut wrenchingly sad for many moments of almost every day. the same moments. how to tell her that there are some moments of laughter and pure joy, and some moments of tears and pure pain, but a hurricane of sadness and elation constantly buzzing in my body, at odds with one another. and balancing those moments and feelings is exhausting and exhilarating and fulfilling and strikingly beautiful in a difficult way.
how do I tell her that i either sleep 2 hours or 10 hours a night and sometimes I feel great and sometimes I feel terrible, and there's no consistent correlation between hours slept, and those feelings. I eat pure, good, whole foods 90% of the time, but I have no self restraint from a Macdonald's cheeseburger happy meal once a week or so ('it's just for the toy' I tell myself). and that I know it's causing issues with my (lymph nodes/liver/kidneys/gall bladder/arthritis), and I still can't stop myself from paying for terrible food that goes against everything I stand for. that I believe in minimalism but I can't stop buying throw pillows with moose on them. that love makes my heart swell and glow, and shrink and shrivel, in the same deep breath and I know exactly how to fix it and am lost for how to fix it. that I simultaneously want to be outside forever among the trees and the water and lie in the grass, and I also never ever want to leave my bed.
no I would never hurt myself or anyone else.
yes my sleep is ok.
yes my pain levels have been fine.
no, my medication hasn't affected my appetite.
how much do we tell a stranger who is in the business of our health - a business that has often relied on hurried and impersonal conversations and once overs? do I tell her all of my instant anxieties and the tools I've worked hard on to combat or mediate them? do I tell her that I am focusing on art - all of the art - because it's all I know how to fill my spare time with? do I say I wish someone else would ask me these things - someone who I could spend hours talking to about my back pain and my heart pain. my sleeplessness and my dreamy new bed (and white sheets and new duvet - OH THE WHITE SHEETS AND NEW DUVET). my new sewing machine and my doubts about my independent creative insight. but everyone is busy and no one knows my brain, and no one knows what another thinks of in single moments of every day. so no one asks about what my new duvet symbolizes, and i don't ask them about their duvets (or equal substitutes) either.
so I don't. I tell her that the counselling has worked wonders and the yoga is like heaven on earth. that I'm eating well despite my apparent and obvious weight loss, and sure I'll take her recommendation for a dietitian. I tell her my medication gives me dry mouth and that i believe I've spent a year and a half climbing mountains to get to a place of strength among circumstances. and I'll smile. and I'll be optimistic for her. and for me - but mostly for her.
and she prints my prescriptions, and asks a couple more questions that tell me she wants me to reveal so much more.
next time maybe I'll tell her.
