Stop, Earthquake, Stop.

 

Hi, Invisible Audience,

 

Are you keeping track of when I post? If you were, you’d realize that I am a day late for this one. I post every other Sunday on this blog (and on Patreon the weeks in between), and yesterday I wrote up a whole post, then decided to sit with what I wrote. Today, I have decided that there’s something else I want to write instead.

 

For those of you who don’t know me personally, I’ve dealt with a long list of health issues for quite a few years now—they seem to change and ripple, but underneath all of them is a profound fatigue. About 6 months ago, I discovered CIRS: Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome. It has a long list of symptoms and I have a lot of them. It gives me hope that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and I’ve invested a lot of time and money into a specialist who can hopefully help me with this. 

 

One of the things the specialist did was a food sensitivity test. I’ve done COUNTLESS of these tests, dutifully cutting everything out as prescribed, and found that overall they did not help over the long term. Not only that, but they give me a profound sense of depression, Invisible Audience. Not only do I love to cook, I love eating out, especially with friends. That’s a hell of a lot harder to do when you can’t eat gluten or dairy or soy or eggs or—a new one this time—nightshades. But this one also took out the one thing I do not want to live without: coffee. 

 

Coffee can make fatigue worse if the adrenals are involved, but the truth of the matter is that I am much less able to function without coffee—to the point where it’s hard to concentrate. Not to mention that I love it! And I don’t go to bars much, so having people who know me at the coffee shop makes me feel like I have a specific community that I feel like I’m a part of. 

 

I am telling you all of this because I haven’t been sleeping well, so I gave up all but decaf coffee a couple days ago in the hopes of feeling better. This comes on the heels of a change up in my supplements thanks to the new specialist, and so far I’m feeling worse and not better. So it probably wasn’t all that surprising that I burst into tears yesterday recording a message for a friend.

When I looked back at the post I wrote yesterday, the whole thing came down to one thing: I am so tired and overwhelmed. Please, world, stop making me feel this way.

I angrily lashed out in every direction, yelling at everyone with a view about Covid-19 and masking and vaccination, basically telling them all to shut up, because I was being driven mad. I told them that it was none of their business what anyone else does, so please stop acting like people are making their choices specifically to piss you off.

 

And that’s why I’m glad I didn’t post it yesterday, Invisible Audience. Because do you see the irony and the hypocrisy in yesterday’s message? I am telling you to stop getting angry at others for making you feel this way, because it’s making me angry at you for making me feel this way.

 

Damn it, Invisible Audience. Damn it, damn it, damn it.

 

I used to do this with you—do you remember?—years ago. I wanted someone to tell me it was ok that I traveled and didn’t have a traditional career or life. Yet even when people did, it wasn’t enough. It didn’t scratch the itch I had, so to speak. Because no matter how many other people validated me, there was something in myself that wouldn’t take it in.

So here I am again. Overwhelmed, exhausted, angry, and the only way out is through me. I have to decide to let others think what they will about the unvaccinated. I have to figure out how to let the deep pain and anger they express when others’ choices don’t align with own roll off my back. I have to make a change to make me feel better. That in itself is its own can of worms that I have unpacked before and still struggle with, but nevertheless, that is where the power lies. 

 

I cannot make one group see the humanity in another just so I can sleep better. It doesn’t work that way. All I can do is figure out where I stand—I am vaccinated, and I am not willing to condemn you just because you are not—and stand there. Because part of the problem is not feeling free to say that out loud, which leads me to hide and simply yell at the world to shut up so I don’t have to risk being authentic. It’s like trying to yell at an earthquake to stop shaking the earth and expecting it to listen because if it only knew it was hurting me it would stop.

 

Some lessons don’t come easy, Invisible Audience. This is one of them. And even so, there’s relief in this realization, and I’m glad about that. It may just take me awhile to figure out how to stop yelling.

 

Love and Trembling Kisses

Morgan

 

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