Tag: lifestyle

On Spontaneity

Unfun confession: I am not spontaneous.

I never was—as a kid, the next swim practice was always on my mind. Lists were necessary for everything: swim-meets, vacations, reading, goals, my future house. I was creating vision boards before they were trendy. Every Sunday, I’d cut out my favorite furniture from weekly newspaper circulars for my future house. Could it have been the naming? Or was it having something to look at in the uncertain fog of childhood? Endometriosis has been part of my vocabulary, my identity, for over a year. I have a name for the cloud, but what can I do with it?

I’m still a list-maker and planner. It’s also all about tracking workouts, moods (I am always a mood), self-care, physical therapy, and sleep. Why? I have still been experiencing significant chronic pain and fatigue after excision surgery. Tracking symptoms is a way to see patterns and identify triggers. The scientific collection of statistics is a ritualistic calming. 

As I write this, I still think I should be more spontaneous. Instead, I plan my life around pain. My period is usually regular, so I plan everything—rest, social time, dates, workouts, events—around how I may be feeling. Otherwise, what if I’m caught in public without an arsenal of tampons? What if I’m stuck in a crowded event, in pain and unable to get to a seat? What if I have to cancel on someone because I didn’t anticipate how ghostly my body would feel? What if I’m so overwhelmed by symptoms I’m being a neglectful partner? Some days, I think a cane for high pain days would be a good investment. Yesterday, I barely made it up a flight of stairs before ceding to the elevator the rest of the day. This may be surprising when you look through my Instagram feed. That’s curation. I prefer to celebrate what feeds my soul online, especially when I need something positive to get through the hard days. I’m the master of the lean with the hip-cock. 

I have been turning the phrase by Rio Cortez in my head for what feels like years: “I have learned to define a field as a space between mountains.” Time and space have a different meaning when you’re racing your limits. Energy is collected in an attempt to maintain inertia. That’s not what her incredible chapbook is about, but the title has taken on a meditative role in my life. I will repeat from my Goodreads review: “if we can communicate how history has made us, there may be space to move forward.”

Tracking, naming, and identifying will probably always be part of the process. I’m an amateur adventurer in all of this. At least until there is some sort of cure for endometriosis.

Some books I was thinking about while writing this:

  • Laurel, Tyler Mendelsohn
  • I have learned to define a field as a space between mountains, Rio Cortez

Stay sweaty and glittery.

#cheesememe

It’s the beginning of Endometriosis Awareness Month, and today, I want to talk about cheese. I may be influenced by Jenny Lawson. I finished Furiously Happy on audiobook in January and I’ve been thinking humor and chronic illness since then. As I change my daily habits, I will never forget all that cheese has done for my gastrointestinal system and my poetry career.

This post will begin with a confession: I watch The Today Show almost every day. I’ve had this morning ritual since moving to Baltimore in 2010. Despite changes in career and habits (early bird to night owl, then back to early bird), Al Roker has stayed with me. He’s the only staff member that hasn’t changed in the eight year period, right? But I was betrayed on January 31, 2019. The segment was on CHEESE.

Per nutritionist advice, I have mostly eliminated dairy (anything with casein, the main protein in dairy) from my diet since February 2018. Endometriosis is exacerbated by inflammation. Dairy is an inflammatory food. I grumbled my way through it, and continue to grumble to this day. Are we at Harris Teeter? Let’s walk by the cheese area to check on my favorites. Look, Satori Balsamic Bellavinto Cheese is on sale and in a sample pod! I’m going to smell it. Ordering food? Homeslyce still has my favorite four-cheese garlic. Let me linger my mouse over the item, remembering the surprise of tart blue cheese with sweeter mozzarella, then build-my-own-pizza with dairy-free cheese, pineapple, and basil.

If a poet can have a brand (debatable), I built the early part of my career on sad poems about loneliness and cheese. Spreadable cheese, block cheese, string cheese (which I bite into, by the way)—cheese was comfort. The soft taste on the tongue, the salty sting, was a hug from the inside. There was even a Baltimore flurry of #cheesememe posts after an MFA classmate made a book out of Kraft Singles (3-4 years ago, I think). How is that book doing, anyway? I saw it about a year ago and it still hadn’t started decomposing. Giving up cheese was probably a good idea.

Anyway, it’s day two of Endometriosis Awareness Month. Click here for facts—the disease affects an estimated 176 million people worldwide. The disease isn’t limited to gender. Or cheese preferences. I’ll be posting more on my Instagram and on the blog throughout the month.

Stay sweaty and glittery.

What is endometriosis?

I have been reading Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights, enjoying the energetic weaving path of his mind. How he sees the world and translates that on the page invigorates my love of the short essay. So does another book I loved in 2018, The Baltimore Book of the Dead by Marion Winik. The essayettes read like poems, therefore I was not surprised (rather, delighted) when I learned that Winik started the project as poems. Our boundaries are not as tight as we think.

In the spirit of boundary-less writing, I have been writing flash essays (paragraphs?) about endometriosis, meant to distill the daily struggles. Reading a symptom list has never been enough to explain living with a chronic illness. For a medical definition, read conflicting explanations of endometriosis online (because there is no cure and the cause is unknown). I’m here to share a piece of what it’s like to live with endometriosis.

So what is endometriosis? It is a disease that can be treated with watchful waiting. It is endometrial tissue ignoring boundaries and doctors unable to explain the migration. I am being a poet over here. This is a current definition from one of the top surgeons in the United States. The problem is, very little is known because there has been little listening and study. You’re told symptoms will go away with menopause. You’re told take the pill to pause your symptoms. You’re told try Lupron to shut down your hormones. You’re told take an antidepressant to shut up.

Endometriosis is rethinking simple pleasures. No conferring with friends until 2a.m., eating pumpkin muffins, going to a restaurant without meticulously studying the menu and looking up ingredients without fear of bodily revolt.

Endometriosis is taking four Advil before work telling yourself this is fine. You’ve been prescribed 800 milligrams of Motrin to survive these days in the past.

Endometriosis is pulling over sobbing in the middle of a 12 hour car ride because your worst period day fell during planned travel. It was already three days delayed from travel stress. You need to change your tampon every hour and a half and you’re in so much pain radiating from your pelvis through your legs that you can’t concentrate. Every bathroom in North Carolina has been filthy, lacked toilet paper to clean up the bloody mess, and you feel like you failed your partner because you cannot contribute to the driving.

Endometriosis is journaling as much as possible because on many days you’re in too much pain to think past clichés. You’re afraid the energy you trying to smile through small talk will take away from your ability to remember.

Endometriosis is taking up circus arts. The callouses on your hands, bruises in your elbows, and hardened bumps on the top of your feet are leading to something. That physical pain means you’ll do something dazzling, like hang upside down from the tops of your feet with a serene smile. As Zadie Smith says in Swing Time, “But elegance attracted me. I liked the way it hid pain.”

Endometriosis is wondering why there is so little research unrelated to fertility. How can you think about fertility when you can barely make it through the day? Why do women’s bodies only matter if the concern is about children? Cut to every horror movie where a woman finds her strength because she is pregnant. What about the rest of us? Watch I Spit On Your Grave (1978) and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) again.

Endometriosis is trying anti-inflammatory diets, then eating dairy and gluten for a week because it’s the holidays. You have the worst pain since before excision surgery and decide to recommit to following the diet. You add weekly acupuncture, hip stretches, and syncing your running cycle with your pain cycle because despite all this exhaustion, you are still an intensely competitive athlete looking for a thrill.

Endometriosis is longing for quiet time in the morning. Let me rephrase. It is longing to not have to think about rationing time throughout the day. Karen Lord wrote an incredible long essay about the day to day pain, stress, and impact as someone working in the health & fitness field. She digs into the frustration, “I’m lucky that after all the tests are run in the ER they tell me I’m the healthiest person they’ve ever seen. I mean except for this, right? Right.” Like the endometrial tissue, your symptoms continue to color every moment.

I hope this gives you some insight into the day-to-day of living with endometriosis. Stay sweaty and glittery.