Doing it for me

My body does what my emotions can’t or won’t.

I’ll give an example. About a year and a half ago, I had sciatica. I looked it up online as to its emotional/metaphysical meaning. The answer: hypocrisy. Where was I living different values than I believe in? Church. About six months later, I stopped attending and, voila!, my sciatica was miraculously cured. I do not believe that quitting church is a commonly accepted cure for sciatica, but it worked for me.

What’s going on now? I believe my body is trying to cry. I am getting random eye irritations, causing my eyes to water. I have an occasional dry cough, which makes me blow my nose. And yesterday, I felt a chest cold starting to come on. There is nothing in my lungs to cough up. It’s just exhaustion plus that oppressive chest heaviness that I have been trying to breathe my way through.

Why can’t I simply express my feelings openly like a normal human being? Because Barry is still in denial about his health. We went to our shrink on Tuesday. I told Barry I wanted to spend time with him, like going out to eat while he can still enjoy it. He may have almost admitted he had cancer, but the therapist was treading carefully so as not to traumatize Barry, I think.

When confronted about his cough, he said that the Flomax was causing it. I sat there and thought, “Huh? What? I so have to look that up.” I did some internet research and, no, Flomax does not generally cause coughing as a side effect. This is pure denial.

It reminds me of someone I know. My friend, Lynn, has a roommate, Wendy. Wendy believes that the vitamins she takes in the morning cause her to cough. Lynn is like, “Seriously? It couldn’t possibly be because you smoke?” Denial at its finest. Gotta be the vitamins. Better stop taking the vitamins. Wow.

It is one thing to understand what is going on and something entirely different to have the freedom to live it.