HA! I've invented a game. Or probably re-invented, since it is
suspiciously similar to classic “pretend” except there is acute illness
involved. Maybe it’s just a plain old coping mechanism. But really folks, who
wants to say “Hey look! I've invented a Coping Mechanism!” when asked what they've been up to? Humor me. I need humoring.
I ache pretty constantly, and now, as the sprinkles on
top, there is sharp random pain to accompany nausea and tachycardia. This is where that elusive
Game comes in (you thought I’d just used the word "game" to trick you into reading this depressing
post, didn't you? No fear, it’s real). Stabbing pain has made it
deliciously easy to be the Little Mermaid (Not Disney’s, but the original
story). Close your eyes. You have feet that feel like knives are cutting them
because of the deal you made with Ursula, but you attempt to move gracefully so
that the prince realizes you were the one who saved him and doesn't marry that fake princess thus leaving you to be turned into sea foam. As you can see,
this game of pretend can be a little involved…but hey. My mind. My rules.
Another symptom is transient
lower extremity numbness and tingling. For this, it’s insanely helpful to be a war
veteran with a wooden leg. However, he continues to walk tall and proud because
he lost his leg in a noble cause, and apparently sometime in the 1800's before
we had any good prosthetics…
I haven’t yet figured out
what to pretend when LE numbness and pain occur simultaneously. Maybe if
Ariel didn't transform into a human
completely and was left with only 1 leg, and thus had to build a peg leg out of
drift wood? As stated, this scenario is still in need of refining.
When I have insufferable fatigue for no good reason, I’d
like to believe that it’s because I’m walking through a field of enchanted
poppies right outside Oz. Body aches are
leftovers from blows sustained while cavorting about in clunky armor, or
surviving a plane crash. Grinding headaches are hangovers from getting drugged
by enemy spies—work through it, Love, you've got a mission to accomplish. Nausea is because you've been climbing Mount
Doom, just had your finger bitten off, and can’t even remember what strawberries
taste like. Don’t sweat it. You’ll get
back to the Shire eventually.
Most of all, that’s what helps: I’ll get back to the Shire
eventually.
The imaginative buffer helps give purpose to what my body
feels, keeps me living life even though I just want to curl up in my bed and
not move for hours on end. In the
meantime, I need to get more reading done so that I can keep on with literary
allusions to sustain my increasingly ravenous mental games.
Mind Games