“I think I need to see Nicole.”
“You’re feeling pretty bad, huh?”
Who’s Nicole?
She’s the only mental health professional I see.
Tourette syndrome, obsessive compulsive disorder, general anxiety disorder, (rarely) depression, social anxiety. I should employ an army of neurologists, psychiatrists and therapists. Instead, just Nicole. She’s not a psychiatrist, although she does a great impersonation. She’s a nurse practitioner. She manages my medications, the psychotropic ones. Tracy, another nurse practitioner, manages the rest.
Does it sound like I take a handful of pills every day? I do. Besides the pill I take for Tourette and the two I take for anxiety and OCD, there are the high blood pressure and cholesterol meds. Oh, and iron. Two of those. If I could get a free pass to eliminate one medication, it would be the iron. God, I hate the iron. I take it in the morning. Sometimes during breakfast, sometimes after breakfast. There’s no rhyme or reason, randomly I feel like crap. The iron leaks back up my esophagus and lurks just below my larynx. A vague uneasiness settles over me. My forehead sweats. I feel almost, but not quite nauseous. It lasts for hours.
Susan and I walked around our neighborhood. “When you say you feel bad, what are you feeling?” I found it hard to name.
“I don’t know. Anxiety? Foreboding? I feel it in my chest. A nervousness.” Susan listens to podcasts by two Buddhist teachers. They endorse poking at your feelings until you can identify the source. She prodded, but not for long. “Unsurprisingly, my blog is involved.”
Susan thought I meant the stats. I have a long history of obsessing over stats. Yesterday, I would have agreed. Today I found clarity. “My blog doesn’t distract me like it used to. There just aren’t that many bloggers anymore.”
Distraction. At work I feel fine. Plenty to distract me there. When I get home, I look for something to do. It used to be my blog. Reading, commenting, responding. Now everyone, well almost everyone, some portion of everyone, is gone.
“I think you’re at a crossroads. You need to replace what you’ve lost on your blog.” I don’t need to see Nicole. I don’t need to adjust my medications. I just need to talk to my wife. “When do you feel best.” A leading question. She knows the answer: When I’m running. “Well, you can’t run every day, you’ll get injured. I think you benefit from the deep breathing.”
I felt better after the conversation and hours later, the feeling remains. Susan might be right, and I have nothing to lose. I’m going to experiment with deep breathing when I lift weights each morning. I want to see if I can replicate the peace I find when I run. As for filling the hole left by WordPress, that may take some time.
~ ~ ~
What do you think? Did this piece work? I settled into an unusual (for me) writing style. I’m discombobulated. I finally broke down and got some eye patches to combat my double vision. Operating with one eye is disconcerting. I notice it wreaked havoc on my spelling. That red, squiggly underline has been a constant companion all evening.
—
Previously Published on jefftcann.com and is republished on Medium.
—
Photo credit: iStock