"What do I have to do to get better?" (now with audio!)
asks every sickie ever, contemplating cutting at least one to three bitches
“What do I have to do to get better?”
I wonder for the nth time, sitting in the sun, marveling at the mountains, feeling the familiar fuzz of my brain not quite filtering the birds and the breeze the way a good brain should.
I’m trying not to ask this question, because it’s a lovely moment. Even as a migraine wraps hot fingers around my skull. Attune: sweet chirps, pretty peaks, bone-white trees stretching bare branches and spring buds straight into the stupid-blue sky.
“But what do I have to do to get better,” my tone-deaf brain gambits again, gesturing to the ache behind my eyes, my rumbly guts, my thousand-pound limbs. “What about springtime wonder AND wellness, eh?”
Okay, BRAIN, fine. What DO I have to do to get better? A flood of ideas barges in at once, despite the bogglingly long list of what I’ve already tried.
Is it time for a bigger, fancier brain retraining program? Even after the other FIVE programs didn’t make a dent? Even if, halfway through one, I dislocated my top vertebra straight into my skull, transforming me from a thirty-mile-a-week hiker into someone reliant on disabled license plates?
Should I bolt that errant c1 vertebra onto my skull so it quits shooting out at inopportune times? My body protested my last metal-into-bone attempt by yeeting my dental implants straight outta my face, but…
Do I give up all my possessions and my beloved apartment fleeing my building's many leaks? Although every mold test of both my building and myself comes back fine and I’ve never once felt any different while away…
Stop, I think. You’ve chased enough, failed enough, and this moment is fine. This life is fine. It’s lovely, even. I’m graced with a world that the normies don’t notice, jogging past with their purebred dogs and AirPods. They don’t feel the grass blades yielding under their sneakers or see fractal branches piercing the sky. I get the secret unseen—
“BUT WHAT ABOUT MOTILITY”, blares my brain, as I try to focus on a bluebird trill. “What about microbiome? Should you give up nightshades? Even though they’re three of your remaining twelve foods? Prolotherapy? But then does the MCAS just eat the ligaments again…okay, what if you toughed out your terrible reactions to all mast cell meds?”
It’s hard to stop asking, because the answer always feels so close. So figureoutable. Just out of reach. If you can just Reduce and Rebuild. Soothe and Regulate. Follow the Protocol. Trust the Process. Tilt the Pelvis. Align the Spine. Take Charge. Surrender. Let Go. Let God. Breathe. Rest. Digest. Again.
But it’s not figureoutable—not right this second, at least. Not for all of us, anyway. Good on you, I think towards the few cured. For me, I’ve only ever found small wins on accident. I’ve lost big (money, function, grief) on intentional, well-considered attempts. I’ve been chasing this since I was six, seriously since I was eighteen, with laser focus for much of my thirties. Now into my forties, I have to conclude there’s not really something I can do. Smarter minds than mine have convened and agonized and experimented and wielded resources I don’t have and they haven’t figured out the cure, either…
Yet.
I say yet, because I like to hope. And I do think someday we’ll know. Meanwhile, I’ll keep trying things—now in a shruggy, bottoms-up kind of way. I’ll hope to stumble into improvements or personal cures…but I don’t hold out for them. I don’t strive, like I once did.
For the most part, my brain is full of other things—friends, gratitude, business, projects, little life philosophies, glimmers, trees, marveling, minutiae. The things that actually make my life better, even if they don’t make my health any better.
Full of other things…usually. Almost always.
But then, on occasion, that ever insidious whisper…
What do I have to do to get better?
Oof 💜 I feel this so hard. Thanks for writing this and for making me feel not so alone
I SEE YOU. I feel this.