I did not meet my writing goals this week. I carefully laid out my plans, set aside time, and redid my vision board to help me focus.
Then my entire week blew up in my face.
On occasion, when I’m over-tired or enduring a long stretch of stress, my imagination will begin to guide my thoughts. Typically my thoughts guide my imagination, and I exploit this for my own entertainment when I’m writing.
I’m fainting again; it seems to be a coin toss whether or not it will happen after I’ve exercised. I’ve gone through this before, so I’m not alarmed, but everyone around me is concerned and I don’t have a way to allay their anxiety regarding it. Ian insisted I go to the doctor, so I made an appointment.
Seeing doctor’s in the past about dizziness, headaches, and fainting has been an exam and a prescription for anxiety medication. Doctor’s love telling me there’s something wrong with my mind. I expected the same treatment this time…
My doctor is great. She’s thorough, personable, and concerned. That’s everything I have ever wanted in a doctor. With my health (and my stubbornness), she’s also very demanding if I tell her something is wrong. After checking my blood pressure, blood oxygen, and examining (and interrogating) me, she sent me to do some tests. My personal space was already affronted by the examination, but I assumed blood draws would be on her list of requests and was prepared for that following the appointment.
She sent me to get an EKG. That day. She gave me a skip-the-referral slip and sent me to a specific place to wait for an EKG.
I was not mentally prepared for that.
I have lived with near-constant nerve pain from my neck down left arm, and my low back to my left knee for over 30 years. I’m accustomed to my health being a shit show, which is why I try not to worry about it. Worrying makes me anxious and tense, which in turn aggravates the nerves and activates my Lupus.
Being told I had to go get an EKG. Same day. Triggered my anxiety. I had to sit in my car for almost thirty minutes and calm down before I could set off to the destination for the tests.
Three clinics in one day. Doctor. Laboratory. EKG clinic. I haven’t had to do something like that since my Lupus was being diagnosed ten years ago. Without an appointment, the wait for the EKG took hours (and waiting did not improve my anxiety). They looked after their scheduled appointments first, and told me they were shutting down for lunch at 12:30. I’d only get seen if I stayed through the lunch hour and waited, because there were no openings that afternoon. I waited. I was seen at 1:30pm at the end of their lunch period and before the first appointment of the afternoon arrived.
I couldn’t get the tension to stop for the rest of the day. I’d find myself grinding my teeth or fisting my fingers while trying to work. At 8:30pm I called it a day and went to lay down.
Laying in bed, I didn’t feel like I fallen asleep. I’d left the light on so I could read and rest. I remember hearing a voice whisper to me. There’s a hole. There’s a hole. There’s a hole. You have to go. It kept repeating.
It was a soft voice, like a whisper. Persistent and monotone.
Rolling over I noticed the large vertical mouth on the wall above my bed. As the lips parted and met, the row of sharp teeth was visible, and a darkened void that deepened towards the centre.
I laid there, looking up at this mouth as it whispered to me. In the brief pause between the repetition, when the mouth was sealed, there was no crack, or line, or defining curves indicating that an orifice had been present. There was only the tawny brown of my bedroom wall. The period of time between statements varied, and I stared at the smooth surface in those blank stretches, wondering if the moment had passed.
There’s a hole. There’s a hole. There’s a hole. You have to go.
Things similar to this used to happen to me all the time. My life was so chaotic growing up that enveloping myself in the imaginary was preferable. I would will myself to daydream, read, write, rehearse dialogue from television shows, movies, and book passages; so frequently that switching into a character or a rehearsed voice became second nature. I could be steadfast and self-assured because I had stepped into the role of someone who was. I didn’t have to panic when faced with a crisis because that’s not what my character would do, they would handle it.
But I’m not a character in a book (as much as that pains me to admit). Similar to how adrenaline eventually slows its release allowing for a descent back into normalcy, following a moment lapse in reality I eventually have to step outside of my fantastical indulgence and return to the real world.
I don’t question what my mind shows me in those instances anymore. I used to get afraid, because like the mouth in the wall above my bed, they seemed real, and I don’t remember falling asleep before they were revealed. I understand now that these are subconscious representations of my mindset at the time. It is easier to rationalize it away as a dream.
I haven’t seen the mouth in a few days now, but I can still hear it speaking to me a low hum of a whisper echoing in the background of my thoughts. I wonder about its message.
There’s a hole. There’s a hole. There’s a hole.
You have to go.