On Being Sick

I'm sick. Sore throat, enlarged tonsils, low back pain, exploding headache and general malaise. Whenever I get sick, I turn into this miserable sniveling mess and generally think I'm going to die. I suppose I could die, but I doubt that even if it is strep throat or meningitis that I'll die from it. Eventually I would lose consciousness, be taken to the hospital, get a proper diagnosis and be treated with way too strong medicine.


Whenever I get sick, I always think about going to the hospital. Or a medical doctor, but usually I think of Urgent Care. Since I know what I would do as a naturopath and have access to acupuncture at home, it feels weird to go to these doctors when I'm feeling ill. I should go to acupuncture tomorrow and get herbs, though.


Lucky for me, I have A and E to help out today. I have never felt so cared for and this is reflected in my feeling significantly better this evening. My throat is still swollen and sore, my ears still have a lot of pressure and my back still hurts, but the headache is subsiding, my fever broke and I had enough energy to ask for the dinner I'm craving (spicy green curry soup) and pick up my room while A took the dog out.

I hate being sick. It makes me half hysterical and half needy...and all too human.

For Someone Else

Been thinking about journaling lately and remembered another journal I kept: a travel journal of my time in Australia. I found a great little bound journal and I wrote about the boys I met, the places I traveled, the animals I held/touched/pet/fed and the parties we had. It was neither profound nor really that interesting. When I later put together a scrap book based on my trip, I included some quotes from the journal with the intention of scrapping the journal altogether.

When I told my good friend D about this plan, she said there was no way this was a good idea and that I had to keep the journal, if not for myself, then for her. I offerred her the journal which she declined while still insisting that I keep it. It's this request, really, that got my wheels turning more than thoughts of the journal itself. She wanted me to keep the journal of not very interesting things for her. Not so that she could read it, which would have been better facilitated by her keeping the journal since she lived on one coast and I moved to the other, but so that she knew it was there.

By extension I started thinking about other requests people make of one to something for them. E owns two couches - the overstuffed and very comfortable loveseat was given by her mother and the hide-a-bed full length, but surprisingly good-in-a-small-space sofa was given to her by her father and step-mother. When she thought of selling one or both couches when we moved into our tiny condo, her mother threw a fit at the notion of E selling the sofa she had gotton her -had she gotton rid of it, it would mean that E didn't love her mother and furthermore, if she kept the hide-a-bed, it would mean a preference for the dad and step-mother. It's like that with gifts, too and not just for E - this happens to almost everyone. People pull some things out of storage and put them on prominent display when relatives come to call to show how highly they prize the gifts people have gotton them.

The idea that I have about this is that doing something for another person can be okay, but it can also lead to being something for another person. For example, E is a packrat and lots of the things she keeps are things that came from her mother. She started off doing something: saving things and then started being something: a packrat. I know that's my label, but even if you take the word away, there is this tendancy that has become a real and unhealthy habit not of her own choosing. And I only use E as an example because this is a really easy one to relate to and talk about. I can talk about her and not myself.

It's a lot more scary to talk about the things that I do and what they might possibly allow me to become if I am not mindful. For the time being, though, I guess I can be glad of the 3,000 miles between my family and I: the gifts are small and infrequent, they rarely visit and they don't notice or care if I don't have them anymore.

Bandaging Our Wounds

I should know better than to have coffee with the hypnotherapist (let's call him Steve) with any expectations of how it's going to go...we ended up staying in his office and I've now committed to being the point person for an upcoming class of his. It shouldn't actually require that much out of me and he's promised to make it worth my while, meaning, I hope, that I won't have to pay for the course and that he'll give my mom another stop-smoking session when she visits in June.

I can't complain about the lack of caffeine stimulation or about adding something else to my to-do list, though, because he helped me immeasurably, just because he's my friend. I was very intimidated to speak to my thesis advisor and mentioned that I was going to see him (my advisor) that evening. I chose my advisor because of my affection for him and I know that he wants me to succeed, but I've been too afraid to speak with him for months. So Steve said to me, " Go and speak to your advisor. Ask for help. And if he wounds you, I'll be here to bandage your wounds."

Wow. He'll be there to bandage my wounds. Someone cares. I needed to hear that.

It's not just a question of him caring, but also that he recognizes the seriousness of the potential wound. He told me about another student who failed their clinical examination and how he sent them flowers to acknowledge their grief. There is so much shame wrapped up in failures of this kind that I think we don't share nor do we know how to recognize these kinds of griefs when they occur. I fear failing my last exit exam, I fear failing my board exams, I fear writing a piece of drivel instead of a thesis and I fear any of these or other reasons preventing me from graduation. Were any of these to happen, I would want to crawl under a rock and hide from the world ... until yesterday. Now I'll go have Steve bandage my wounds.

The Impostor

I've been trying to write a post about my core values, how I discovered them, how I'm developing them and the challenges to acting in alignment to them, but I'm finding it extraordinarily difficult to post a blog that has meaning and connection to my heart in that way. In my personal growth work, I've identified a pattern of acting as an "Impostor" in my own life. The Impostor is ultra-competent, always compassionate and embodies integrity to the nth degree. Impostor never feels insecure, always knows the answers and never makes mistakes. Of course, the impostor is also not human or possible, but with superficial friendships, distant professional relationships and short term time frames, it it possible to pull off sometimes...but it doesn't feel good.

I am actually a highly competent, but procrastinating and sometimes lazy professional. I am compassionate but also sometimes cynical and judgemental. I hold integrity as a core value and regret the breaches of integrity I have made but am also still fallible and make mistakes every day. I vacillate between intense confidence and depressing insecurity in many arenas of my life. Challenges to my knowledge and differing opinions make me anxious and responding to them is difficult. I tend to think in extremes - black and white - all or nothing - when it comes to interpersonal relationships. I take things very personally.

Maybe I'm doing some interior spring cleaning since I'm on spring break this week...or maybe it's just another way to avoid working on my thesis, but either way, there is use to working on how I relate to the world. So here's the concept: today is the first day of the rest of my life and I'm going to work on being more authentic ... starting now. Right now. Yep - here I am world - naked, scarred, scared and flawed - and perfect, starting now.