Why keep your pain, when you can write it away.
Grrumpy Cat Chronicles 2
My wife keeps my ailment diary. She tracks in it all things that pained me on any given day. I was telling her about my tiny little struggles routinely and she just could not process or retain it all, and that obviously pained me too. Every day I had to start from scratch, so she came up with the brilliant idea to capture it all. It’s a most diligent and dignified way. I feel acknowledged and whether she really cares or simply pretends, not a drop of my pain gets lost in the fray as it gets written away.
I’m not old, but things pain me a lot. It’s just the nature of things. Combination of subpar genes, over-sensitivity, lack of resilience, good old hypochondria and male’s natural propensity to experience pain.
One day it’s the fingertip paper cuts courtesy of psoriasis, they are truly annoying since almost everything I do involves fingertips so it’s impossible to forget them, the only way to get on with them is to treat them with bandaid glue. Then there are the toes and those are tough too, you know, you may not realize this but your entire weight is on them whether you’re standing or lying down.
Let’s not forget the bloating, well that one is apparently up to me, if I don’t eat xyz, or more like f, o, d, m, a, p and s, then I’ll be perfectly fine, just like everybody else, if I don’t upset the bile I’ll be able to wave again and maybe even smile. I’ve tried it once though — it was awful.
Daily pain gets so mundane it could drive you insane, by just slipping away, unnoticed, alone, seemingly insignificant, yet so obviously there.
There are two ways of solving this. You can go the scientific way which is what I did because no one believes in science any more so it’s kind of hot.
I’ve solved my IBS this way, you know the ailment doctors diagnose people with when they have no idea why their bowels hurt. I signed a waiver saying I totally understand we do not use ChatGPT for this yet and that I acknowledge that by inserting a maximum amount of tubes and wires into a select choice of orifices, not of my choice, I may get diagnosed with a permanent rather than fleeting disease, like celiac for example.
I made that choice. Bad call, no one trusts the establishment and I did. Now I have to live with the consequences. I no longer have to navigate the “fodmaps” madness, I just need to avoid gluten, well, not avoid, more like run from it like from hell itself, as even micro cross-contamination can upset my immune, and I might not even feel it and yet it will still go on a full rampage of inflammation and destruction against my own body. Wish I did not know that, but now that I do, it’s easy, peasy. Skip the freshly baked bread with the crispy skin, the sundried tomato and pesto pasta, the beer… omg, what?
The second way is to lay low, do not sign any waivers, embrace it and just write it all away. Like in the children’s movies, and you can do it yourself, write it away, close the covers and blow on it, twirl three times, but only if you haven’t recently twisted your knee, which is avoidable if you just prudently elect to “Skip the fame, (don’t breathe or ski), and cherish the mundane.” ← As you can see I take this method very seriously, you don’t have to treat your pain superficially in bullet or point form, you can go all out, and bound it in a book or frame it and immortalize it with a nail and hook.
The neat thing about the pain diary is that you will never run out of material. I’ve been particularly blessed with never-ending content as auto-immunes like to travel in packs, which normally would be such a pain, but when you are on a mission to write it all away, you want to make sure nothing goes to waste, that no pain gets unnoticed, unacknowledged or tossed away. Your pain matters.
For best results, I advise dictating it to someone else. There are several things at play here. For one you don’t have to write, as one of your many ailments may prevent you from doing it comfortably or at all, it also automatically, in parallel, transfers some of the pain away onto your spouse, parent, sibling, or friend. I’ve never tried it with random bystanders so I have no research to back that up but I imagine it would not carry the same weight.
The best part is that results are instant. You feel relieved and unburdened, you no longer carry the pain alone in seclusion, it’s out there somewhere, living on its own, having its way, and you can go on while it affects someone else or just dries away.
If you are concerned that you are giving something away, something you cherish, and are fond of, because it’s always been there, and you cannot imagine it won’t be there, I assure you, depending on your age, your ailments are not like gasoline, you will never run out, it’s more like the sun, it’s simply temporarily covered with clouds and rain, but they’re all there, just waiting for the right day. New and old ailments, ones you may have forgotten or written away so many times you may have thought you’ve dealt with them for good. They will be back, like family at Thanksgiving, whether you want them or not, they will not abandon you, they will be there to cast their subtle or debilitating shadows all day.
Once you’ve dealt with it make sure it’s always covered with something heavy, like an encyclopedia, if you can’t find one on the curb, then a jar of pickles will do, but never a stone, we know how unreliable those can be, since the Roman times. If you elect to eat the pickles for the health of your gut-brain flora, have a jar of kimchi or kefir handy just in case. If you don’t fully trust natural or unnatural medicine like me, you can double up with a capsule of probiotics and wash it down with kombucha for a double hit, though it does make me wonder what kind of relations the Triborulacolis Fantasmus strain currently has with the Acidofallus Hitlerus, so I stay forever weary.
It may not work for you and it is work, but would you rather let the ailments eat away at you in seclusion, alone, or would you rather acknowledge them, and their hard work too? They don’t want to kill you or they’d be gone too, they just want your attention as everything else does. Why do you think the leaves rustle in the wind as you pass by, exactly, so just let them live, or carve them into stone and throw into a river, the further you can throw it the better you’ll feel. Unless you sprain your hand while at it, so always weigh your options carefully.
We haven’t even delved into the psychological pain aspect and concentrated only on the physical manifestations, but rest assured, you can do this with all your psycho problems too, and cast them away, though there is a danger that once they are transmuted into words, they may dislodge you even more. Either way, do not fret.
Follow the Grumpy Dad Chronicles for weekly or bi-weekly or tri-weekly dose of negatively charged insights and cynical advice. Get demotivated to the point of no return. You can’t hit bottom when you’re already resting on it.
