Unforgiven
It might not have become a nearly unbridgeable issue if it had only been the one incident. The residual effects were small, and could have faded into the background, but then the chronics started. It wasn’t just the musculoskeletal anymore, but the endocrine, the cardiopulmonary, the gastrointestinal. Out of the 11 systems that govern body function, eight of mine have sustained some kind of damage. For the most part, my body has adapted, often with medication, sometimes not. But every new diagnosis, it reinforces that my own body is out to get me.
Because of that, even when I am steady on my feet, I don’t feel like I am, and I impose restrictions on myself just in case my body decides to be undependable again. For example, I will not exercise outside my apartment building. No matter how well I know my blood sugar patterns during exercise, I never want to be dependent on the kindness of strangers should my blood sugar drop to the point where I need help to deal with it. It has never happened, but it could.
Or the time I was visiting my family and they decided to meet in-laws and go sledding without asking me if I wanted to go or telling me until we were there. I had to walk up and across an icy hill in sneakers. I was furious because I felt wobbly and exposed. My body was not sending me good messages. I stayed at the top of the hill with the other terrified person, a two-year-old who decided to take shelter with me instead of his parents.
The inability to trust myself has invariably stoked the battle between body and psyche. It has made it harder to listen when my body is trying to tell me something. It has left all the decisions up to my psyche, which tends to be somewhat illusory and overly optimistic.
This time of year is Jewish New Year, so one of reflection and contemplation for me. I am not particularly religious, but the familiarity of it and the opportunity to spend time with close chosen family spurs me to participate. In one of the prayers, we ask to be kept safe from those who would see us harmed, in their words, our enemies. This year, as I sat in a quiet room surrounded by people, I began to think, what if the enemy you seek safety from is yourself? How does that work?
My body has felt like the enemy for a long time. There is good reason for me to portray the manifestation of my conditions as a monster that lives under my bed. In the moment, I didn’t have time to address that particular Gordian knot, but I did make the leap to a larger issue. I haven’t forgiven it (my body) yet. Over the last 38 years, we have beaten the living hell out of each other — my body malfunctioning and my psyche punishing it in an effort to not be controlled. We are both at fault, and we have both subsided (mostly). But the damage is done. I admit that I was wrong, but of course, my psyche will hear no such admission from my physical self. Without it, I don’t know if I can forgive it. Me.
It’s exhausting to constantly be at war with yourself, or maybe on good days at an uneasy ceasefire. But until I can figure out how to forgive my physical self for its repeated betrayals, I will never be able to rebuild trust in myself. I would like to, but it has been decades and I just don’t know how. Until I do, I remain unforgiven.
Originally published at https://patientadvocateschronicle.com on September 9, 2021.
