Dear Companions,
To my last piece, in which I poured — if not my creative wit — my mind’s essence, L replied: it was not the best. He thinks I should be doing fiction or something. My dad, in a rare blessing on this whole exercise, thought it was my best thus far, but I realized it was because he thought it was a goodbye, a summary of my learnings, bringing this to a close. I suppose, as a father, there would be no greater desire than for his daughter to close a blog about being in pain, delaying dreams, learning to deal with life’s difficulties.
But I'm still here battling falcons that regularly devour my skull, so I’m not sure why he thinks it would be over. Literally had a work call, where I ended in teeth chattering pain the other day. Afterwards, I could feel my knees in my mouth. Nobody on the call was any the wiser. Initiating double life sequence. Plus, I still have no clue how to articulate the HEALINGVRSE, so there’s work yet to be done.
My dad’s blind optimism feels, at times, insensitive. Gabor Mate says to get over such issues. And who am I to stand up to what the algorithm tells me to get over. Plus, I read recently in Million Dollar Weekend, The Surprisingly Simple Way to Launch a 7-Figure Business in 48 Hours, that you need to try something 100x before giving up, and I’ve only done 50 some odd posts.
A 17th personality type!
Writing still hurts. Can't be a writer if it hurts, can I? It's like a sex worker with a shallow porthole. And yeah, that's crude. But it’s a lot less crude than the real description of my experience. And anyway, I am crude, or at least I was when healthy, so I think it’s a good sign. Another breadcrumb in the HEALINGVRSE.
Sometimes, writing here on Substack feels a bit like I’ve volunteered to join a junior varsity NPR squad. Everything, everywhere, so sanitized. Blech. Is it the act of writing itself that does that? What’s the point of self-sanitizing? Am I perpetuating any mistruths?
Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others.
-Brothers Karamazov
But I should also remember that when I was at my sickest, expressing negative thoughts only made me sicker. It was impossible. The only thing that got me through the Abyss was writing with a positivity. In that world, I had to constantly make the lemonade. And I’m not healed enough to really address the darkness.
Still I do miss cursing. Do I think that cursing is somehow going to anger the gods and stop my healing? I hope that by the end of this journey, I can emerge with a 17th personality type: empathetically crude. Someone true to my past, someone true to the journey.
Hookworm deniers?
To all those Long Covid deniers who seem to ignore the notion of post viral conditions that have existed since the beginning of recorded time, I want to point out a little fact I learned on the bus ride back to Montauk.
The story goes that Rockefeller, seeking to investigate if hookworm was one of the causes of the South’s lower productivity, funded a philanthropic public health project called the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission for the Eradication of Hookworm Disease. It had three goals: to estimate hookworm prevalence in the American South, provide treatment, and eradicate the disease. The commission not only treated hookworm but also raised awareness about sanitation and hygiene practices, leading to broader improvements in health outcomes in the affected communities.
Today, for first time, six fast-growing states in the South — Florida, Texas, Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee — are contributing more to the national GDP than the Northeast, in government figures going back to the 1990s. The switch happened during the pandemic and shows no signs of reverting.
Imagine if everyone was a hookworm denier.
An idea born of being pissy…
Stimulated by my disgruntled attitude toward Substack, I've asked an editor friend to help edit that last piece, and maybe I can get it written up somewhere. A TV digest. A Bazooka gum wrapper. A row of cobwebs. Still, it would be a proud achievement.
And I'd have YOU to thank for keeping me going. I mean that. To all of you who join me here, I appreciate it.
So, as promised by the header, this week I'll be short, returning next time with some ideas I’m mulling like most effective strategies for dealing with anxiety, which I’ve deduced into three (five?) things that can help one survive the feeling of living inside of a locked tomb in a perpetual earthquake.
With much love from the Healingvrse,
Rebecca