Episode 7
I laid in bed on a rainy Wednesday morning; even though it was 8am, it was dark and my house was cold. I wanted to snuggle even deeper under the covers and go back to sleep but I couldn’t–I had somewhere to be: my pre-operation appointment.
For a moment I wondered if I should just cancel…cancel it all. The surgery, the prep, everything. I had lived with the pain this long so what was another 50 years?
Before reaching for my phone and doing something I would regret, I paused and chuckled. Yes, I did want more sleep and I could acknowledge that part of my reluctance to get out of my warm, safe cocoon was because outside of the covers of my bed was a difficult reality that I was facing. I let myself lay there a little bit longer and felt a sense of surprise that I would consider leaving things as they were.
It struck me in that moment how drawn I was to familiarity–even if that familiarity left me in pain.
I don’t think I am somehow unique in this. As humans we gravitate toward what is familiar, even if familiar doesn’t serve us. I call it functional dysfunction: when we engage in behaviors, thoughts, patterns, and relationships that are not particularly healthy or functional but because they are familiar, they give the illusion of functionality and safety. This is why we stay in patterns that no longer serve us, repeat relationships even if they are harmful or abusive, or struggle to start new habits even if it is the best thing for us.
It didn’t take me long to understand what was happening as I laid in bed. As much as I was ready to be done with pain, symptoms, and the entire recovery process, there was a certain level of fear and unfamiliarity that went with it. Because, simply, I didn’t even remember what it was like to live in a functioning body without pain.
I don’t remember what it’s like to lay down in bed at night without a shooting pain in my back from where the larger of the fibroids sticks out. I only have vague memories of the last time of pain-free sex. It’s been over a decade since I haven’t had issues with my GI tract and elimination. I’ve simply learned to live with pain. And pain became my normal. My familiar. My functional dysfunction.
***
I am struck by how often this is how we as humans navigate the stuff of life. We say that we want things to change, that we desire health, we want fulfilling relationships and yet…when push comes to shove, what is familiar to us is simply…easier and more comfortable.
One of the aspects that initially made my hysterectomy a bit more bearable was knowing that I didn’t have to go through it alone. At the time I found out about the fibroids and need for surgery, I was dating someone–someone who promised to be there for me and navigate this experience with me. We had just entered a new phase of our relationship and were navigating living together.
For his part, this was his first time in a relationship with someone who was both healthy and committed to doing a relationship differently. I think that is one of the things he was initially attracted to in me. He had his own extensive history of trauma from how he grew up and his time in the military and had navigated through life mostly by way of anxiety, avoidance, and dissociation. He loathed feeling anything other than happy, feared feeling any sort of discomfort, and when triggered would revert back to behavior that was much younger than his chronological age. He had never seen modeled or been in a relationship that prioritized healthy communication and conflict resolution skills; our relationship was brand new territory for him.
I quickly learned, however, that his avoidance of discomfort meant suppressing things until he could hold them in no longer, which usually resulted in me feeling blindsided and having to navigate insults and accusations that made it difficult to keep my walls down and practice empathy.
A mere three weeks after he moved in, he came home and told me he wasn’t happy and was moving out. He couldn’t give me answers as to why, saying only that he wanted to be comfortable. When I pressed him for areas that he was not feeling comfortable with, he mumbled that he didn’t like having to put his dishes in the dishwasher instead of letting them pile up in the sink and not liking that my coffee machine required pushing 3 buttons instead of 1 to get coffee in the morning.
I knew him well enough to know that if he were in his adult mind, this would not have been an issue and certainly it would not be an issue to break up with someone over. But I recognized quickly that his adult brain was offline and he was reacting from a triggered space.
Despite his high value of feeling comfortable, living in a home, our home, that was the epitome of comfort, was uncomfortable to him. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t living in survival. He was living in a home with furniture that was selected for comfort and aesthetic vibes rather than the cheapest furniture that could be found. There was a pantry and refrigerator full of food, rather than depending on microwavable meals and fast food dinners. The house was clean, the laundry was done, and there weren’t stacks of things littering the house that would hopefully be taken care of someday–someday when it felt safe again to slow down.
Though he wanted comfort–desired comfort…needed comfort–when he actually had comfort presented in front of him, it was too unfamiliar. Too uncomfortable. So instead of leaning in, he left.
Functional dysfunction.
***
This is how so many of us live our lives. This is what I was thinking that morning in bed. For a brief moment I believed that the familiarity of pain would be easier to grapple with than the unfamiliarity of health and healing.
It’s always amazing to me how alluring pain and suffering can be as compared to embarking on unfamiliar territory. And yet, each time I’ve done it, I’ve been surprised not only at how much better life can be, but how my tendency to be drawn toward familiarity ends up keeping me small, subdued and living a half-life.
Oftentimes that is how it is: we can’t even recognize how bad it truly was until we are out of it and able to compare what was to what is.
Just a few weeks after moving to Nashville, on a phone call with a friend, I disclosed that I hadn’t even been aware how suffocating my life felt until I got here and I could finally breathe. Things that I had “struggled” with while living in the North no longer seemed to plague me and there was a light in my eyes again. It wasn’t lost on me that I almost canceled my move. The thought of moving across the country by myself to relatively unfamiliar territory was scary and I wondered if it was really worth it.
Yet by taking the chance, I gained so much.
***
I’ve fought many ‘mystery symptoms’ for years. In the early days, it was these symptoms that kept me motivated–at least to a degree. My most obvious symptom was rapid, extreme, and inexplicable weight gain followed by a host of other physical and psychological symptoms. Different doctors, practitioners, and alternative medicine experts offered varying treatments, protocols, and suggestions but none of them worked.
I finally resolved myself toward the body-positivity and acceptance movement, believing that if I just accepted my weight gain and other symptoms, deconstructed my internalized fatphobia, and learned to love myself more that I could live an ok life. The symptoms may not be gone, but at least I wouldn’t be critical or shameful of myself for having them.
To be fair, I do think that body-love and acceptance can be a really important part of healing, resolving trauma, and life in general. I know my efforts here were not in vain. But I also knew that it wasn’t the key to what was happening. I was grateful that my internal dialogue was kinder and more compassionate and that I was able to curb my self-criticism. And I also knew from the deepest parts of me that my journey didn’t end in “mere” acceptance.
After years, however, I was exhausted. Exhausted by the doctors and medical care system that was wholly unhelpful (and often misdiagnosing me). Exhausted by mental health professionals who were trauma un-informed and sometimes did more harm than help. Exhausted by self-help books, websites, courses, detoxes, diets, supplements, and new forms of fundamentalism in the wellness world that promised the results I was looking for but seemed to have the opposite effect.
So, at some point, I did just learn to live with it. I resigned myself to believing that this is how life was going to be and I needed to make the most of it. It was a mindset. I would make accommodations where necessary and live life to the fullest. It was the only way I could think of that would send a message to the rest of the world (and to myself!) that I was not defined by the things that other people had done to me.
And ya know what? I did ok. I was relatively happy. I experienced joy, relationships, confidence, professional success, laughter, adventures, and connection.
I still had my moments of frustration and utter confusion; I let myself be honest about them without being consumed by them. Life was ok. I learned how to navigate it and even recognized that I could survive living like this for many, many more years.
I held out hope that someday things would get better but I stopped shaming myself when they didn’t.
***
I know now that part of my tears as I left my IUD removal appointment and my surgical consult appointment were tears of relief. My body was finally exhaling because there was an inherent knowing that not only was I being believed, but there was something that could be done.
I thought back to the decade worth of journals of mine that I read and reread many times for my doctoral dissertation. I remembered the language I would use to describe the experience of living in my body–as if I had a snowsuit on; my body seemed to be swelling up to cover over an injury; layers of protection that my body deemed necessary.
All of it started to make sense.
My body had been telling me messages all along, I just didn’t know how to listen. My body was screaming at me with symptoms while professionals were screaming at me, telling me it was all in my head, while wellness-gurus were screaming at me that I just needed to love and accept myself. Since I was so unpracticed at listening to and valuing my body, I chose not to listen to her and instead learned to live in my own functional dysfunction.
***
And that leads us to a Wednesday morning at the end of February where I am nestled under my covers, procrastinating getting out of bed. It was the day of my pre-op appointment–the last step before my surgery would take place, less than a week later. I met with Dr. M to go over our surgical plan; my parents were on the call as well. They jumped at the opportunity to be here for the surgery and take care of me afterwards, something words cannot fully do justice to in regard to gratitude.
As I laid in bed, stretching out every last moment before I needed to get up for the day, I took a moment to offer myself compassion for my own humanity. I assured my body that I would have the surgery and assured the parts of me that were scared of change that while recovery was sure to be difficult and would require patience, it would be worth it. Unfamiliar territory would allow for more than acceptance, ok-ness, and getting by. I now had the opportunity for more.
***
Author’s note: The idea for this newsletter series came to me after my IUD removal appointment–when I knew that I would be getting my fibroids removed. The more I talked to people, the more I realized that so many people go through this particular phenomenon, with even more people going through experiences of pain and suffering that may be unnecessary but are viewed as a part of life they just have to deal with. So, I decided I wanted to share my story. However, I also knew that I wanted to honor my own process and not feel obligated to write during recovery or share things I wasn’t ready to share. To that end, I opted to wait until a month after my surgery to begin sharing this process. I needed to give myself time and space to heal so that I could check in with myself and make sure that this was still something I wanted to do. And it was! Each episode reflects my experience of what was happening in that moment–I’ve been writing this entire time, capturing through journaling what this process has been–but have been waiting at least 6-8 weeks to make them public. My hope has been to honor my own process of recovery by being authentic and vulnerable without oversharing or being graphic (which often happens if we are sharing things in the moment!) Thank you for joining me on this journey!
The next episode comes out next Tuesday; you can access previous episodes here!