Do you feel this, too?

Your eyelid twitches, and then it stops. A spot on your thigh pulses — one, maybe two beats, and then it’s over and gone for a year. You’re itchy for no apparent reason, and then it goes away until the next itch without a reason.

Do you ever get those feelings?

I have. And I assume I’m not alone (this assumption is loosely based on Google autofills and those late-night, meandering conversations where you ask, “Does anyone else…?”).

Growing up, I only ever felt a pulse and a twitch and an itch here or there, then and when. I never really thought about it, except to briefly note that it was interesting. I never worried about it.

Around November of last year, I started feeling a lot more of it. It hasn’t stopped since.

Just today, I’ve experienced:

1. A soft, round, quarter-sized thudding or knocking, like a mini heartbeat, pulsing in my left bicep
2. That same pulsing in my left buttock
3. That same pulsing in my left shin
4. That same pulsing in my chin — but smaller, more miniature
5. A heaviness that feels blue or purple, evenly pressured, weighing down my left shoulder. The heaviness shifts, becoming narrower strip of yellow heat across the tricep.
6. An icy coldness across my rib cage, below the soft protrusion of my breasts, though it is soft and sheet-like, like a blanket. The coldness shifts, wrapping around to the sides of my body. It begins to heat up, and flow into the backs of my arms.
7. A buzzing, warm feeling in my hands — as if it is static on a television screen, but warmer than that and rounder than that.
8. A sharp, icy, pinprick — sudden in its speed — that visits my chin. Or was it my shin? Both. I don’t remember.

If you want the medical version, I think my symptoms are: “tingling, muscle aches and pains, twitching”.

The above is a small sample size of what I feel on any given day. It happens throughout the day, and sometimes, it wakes me up at night. The sensations are much more noticeable when I am in a parasympathetic, “rest and digest” state, which is very inconvenient for sleeping.

When it first started, I got blood tests, Googled furiously, and talked to all the doctors I know (family, friends, primary). They told me everything was normal, or referred me to a few specialists who told me that it was normal.

In the beginning, I was excited about it.

I get excited about new things. I was feeling particular excited for this, because my body had been feeling “stuck” (more on that below). I like encountering strange new experiences and making up theories for them, and this was a very new experience.

Here were some of those theories:

Maybe I’m finally allowing myself to get more sensitive.

1. Growing up, I told myself that “I just don’t feel things as much as other people.” This applied to physical sensations, as well as emotions.
2. 2017 is the year that I started to allow myself to cry. I made a connection between emotional flow and the physical consequences of released emotion.
3. (2017 is also the year that I realized that I wasn’t a “dog person” purely because I judged them for being uncool for showing unconditional love — and the year that I started to open my heart to dogs. It is also the year that I realized that I make up stories in my head about how people hate me and I hate people, and that’s why I feel drained of energy and identify as an “introvert” — now, I like people, and don’t think I’m either).

Maybe this is my body cleaning up house.

1. I was recovering from a horrible, three-month long constipation. I don’t exactly know how or why, but my bowel movements returned — with a vengeance (Diarrhea up to seven times a day, extreme dehydration, many days in a row — was it food poisoning? Who cares, I was pooping, hallelujah!).
2. The timing of my bodily sensations coincided with the return of my bowel movements.
3. The timing of my bodily sensations also coincided with me feeling Joy, Inner Peace, and Zen. I will have to describe that in another story.

Maybe I can get to the bottom of this.

1. I wanted to solve it, for myself and others. I logged my inputs and outputs in spreadsheets, but the sensations were always too complicated, and words too inadequate, for me to make heads or tails of it.

I shared my experiences, excitedly, with friends. Sometimes, they’d look at me with concern and say, “You should get tested” or “It sounds like neuropathy.” Their worry became mine. Some days, I wondered what was wrong with me.

Some nights, I’d lay awake, feeling what I could only describe as pain at the time (what I have learned to describe, instead, as a white hot heat, soft and round, the shape of a small ellipse, with medium pressure). I’d think:

Poor me.

This is too much.

Is it somehow my fault? Did I eat something? Is there mold in my apartment? Am I not exercising enough?

What’s wrong with me? Am I going to die?

(I know — dying seems like a huge jump from pulsating. It just feels weird when it’s happening all the time. Plus vertigo, losing balance while walking, and a bunch of weird things.)

What if I never get better?

From November until May, I was pretty happy, even with all the sensations. It was manageable, so long as I either believed the best or believed that I was doing my best, given the uncertainty of the situation.

Telling theories, however, can go very awry. I started to tell myself this one:

You’re really sick, and you have no idea why. You’re stuck, and you’re probably doing things to make it worse. It’s also not that serious, because everyone feels like this. You’re over-exaggerating. Get over it.

It doesn’t make much sense, looking at it now.

But at the time, it made a lot of sense: “you’re really sick; get over it”.

I knew that people suffered from worse and died from worse. I knew that what I had was a first world problem. (You know you have a first world problem when the thing you’re suffering from doesn’t have any causes or solutions — it’s cutting edge. And it’s not like anything was wrong from the outside.)

I knew that, but I also knew me. It just wasn’t normal for me — I was always a pulse-once-or-twice-a-year kind of girl.

I felt badly about the whole thing. I felt guilty, ashamed, alone. I felt that none of my feelings were justified. I wondered if I was going crazy. I felt that I didn’t want to live in my body.

Many times, I wanted it to go away. I wanted to throw a magic pill at it.

During this time, I think I was depressed.

When I was feeling my most awful, I went to my mother — a doctor of both Western and Eastern medicines — for help. I wanted to fix myself. She shook her head, saying that Western medicine didn’t have the answer that I was looking for. Instead, she asked me,

“What is the problem?”

That day, I cried, saying that I didn’t know.

Later, I figured out an answer that I think I can live with.

I am not sure whether the sensations are a “problem” — whether they are the precursor to some horrible disease. They are what they are — feelings, sensations.

The real problem was that I was feeling all these things, and I didn’t want to feel them.

The real problem was that I was afraid that I was messing up, and I felt guilty that I hadn’t found an answer yet.

The real problem was that I felt badly about myself and my decisions.

Today, I’m still feeling all these things.

I still don’t know why I’m feeling this, and I don’t know that I need to know. After many doctor’s visits, research, and supplements, I have realized that I can zero in and make my life’s purpose to understand these sensations — see all the doctors, read all the research, offer myself for clinical trials, throw a lot of money down this hole — but that’s not the direction I want to go, yet.

I don’t think I’m the only one, and I think that one day, our descendants will be laughing at the state of our medicine. But I have to pick problems that I can solve within this lifetime.

It’s November again, around the anniversary of when I began to feel very differently. I don’t know that I understand it any better. I do know that it’s here to stay, and that thinking positively or neutrally is better than being mean to myself about it.

So while humanity hasn’t figured out all the answers, I’m going to go with my gut, talk to my primary care doctor once in a while, and trust that I’m doing what’s right for me.

In the meantime, 2017 has been, in my own words, either a “blessing” or a “nightmare”. What was uncomfortable, is now new. What was painful, is now sensuously hot, sharp, and textured motion. What was suffering, is now experience of new things.

It’s not easy, but it is what it is.

Do you feel this, too?

Share if you have the feels. Or hit me up if you ever find yourself in this state. I will be a listening ear that believes you. I also have many theories for you.

• https://www.headspace.com/blog/2014/12/05/why-does-my-body-experience-strange-sensations-when-i-meditate/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kundalini