It’s about 3:30am in the morning. My son clambered into my bed about an hour ago and I cannot get back to sleep. I am wide awake, listening to the myriad strange and new sensations in my body, thoughts rattling through my mind. I am restless, I need to write the thoughts down, to get them out of my head. Often scenarios from my life roll out like this, like words on a page.
The last few weeks I have been obsessively over-thinking all of it. My symptoms, the possible causes, solutions and back round again. The feelings in my body, the pain, the emotions, the worries, my work, my parenting, my finances, on and on it goes. Every day a silent inner monologue breaking down my internal world and comparing it to the day before. It is completely exhausting and overwhelming and I realise that many of my questions may never be answered. Certainly no one has been able to offer me a conclusive answer yet. There is no easy root cause, no easy route to recovery and all the thinking is not helping.
"But when did it all begin?" My Mum implored beseechingly a few weeks ago on the phone. I hear the confusion in her voice, the frustration and misapprehension.
Her question has me tracking back.
When did this all begin?
Was it last year when the tearing pain first ripped through my lower left hand side setting off a monthly rhythm of fear and pain?
Was it when I had Covid and the antibiotics I took for the ensuing chest infection made my bones ache?
Was it the year that my son started school and his sleep descended even further into chaos? His nights subsumed by twitching and trembling, waking over and over again so I would phone 111 thinking he was having fits in the middle of the night? Sobbing down the phone as kind voices asked “and what about you? Do you have any support?”
Was it when I had glandular fever during the first lockdown and my head spun for weeks, my exhausted body beset by strange popping sensations so I wondered if I was having a million tiny strokes, dragging myself up in the day to care for my 4 year old because the rules said no one could come to help and so nobody did.
Was it when I lived in London and my hands started to go numb when I slept? Days subsumed by deep fatigue that had me collapsing in bed on the rare occasions my sons Dad took him out for the day.
Or when my ears started ringing, a deep hum that had me sitting up in bed, wondering what weird new machinery could possibly make that noise? Crying that I would never hear silence again, panic rising in my chest.
And I track back even further. My two week old baby, feet burning hot, the GP telling us "he needs to go to A&E straight away." Walking down Homerton High Street in the dimming drizzle, eating salty takeaway chips in a greasy box whilst he had a lumbar puncture and wondering what happens if I just walk away now?
"Come back in 20 minutes” they said.
The procedure too traumatic for parents to witness. The guilty gulp of relief I felt in those 20 minutes, remembering for a moment how life was before a baby, the freedom of it and then plunged into a battle to save his life from meningitis.
Or further back. A skiing accident in my early twenties, neck and back ravaged by whiplash, months lying in bed, in pain.
Or further back to the little girl who could not sleep until everyone in the house was asleep. Waiting for quiet because only then was she safe.
Did it begin with the mold on the window frames? Tiny black dots.
Or with the cheap toxic paint that previously lined the walls inside my current house?
Or the myriad electric wires attached to the outside of it?
Did it begin inside or outside of me?
Do I track it down to the neural pathways in my brain, hard-wired to fear and negativity whilst others seem able to dance in the light?
So many times I have been told that my thoughts are the culprits. That I have created this life, continue to create it. Every time I imagine the worst, terror subsumes me that I will make it real. The worst, that I am a negative person having bad and dangerous thoughts.
I look back at all these past versions of myself and I feel angry and disappointed with them. I want to shake the self in the hospital bed dazed and exhausted, checked out from giving birth and gas and air. Shake her and tell her "pick up your baby, you should be doing skin to skin, not letting him lie in the bassinet next to you." Maybe then they wouldn't have taken him, shoved needles in his hand and kept us in for longer because his temperature was under. Maybe then he would have slept better, not got sick, not need me so much now.
How could I not have known that?
Why didn't I hold my baby close?
I think back to the days when my son was an infant. I should have tried harder, should have done those online yoga classes, should have stayed up when he eventually slept, done more exercise, eaten better food.
But deep down I know that I couldn't.
We are taught that there is a clear path to wellness, a trajectory back to health. You get sick, you rest, you take medicines, you recover.
But I am coming to learn that this is not so with all illness.
The path I am on seems to be weaving only further into a deep dark forest, tangling in and back on itself so I can't see the way out anymore. I am reminded of Little Red Riding Hood, followed by the wolf and of the wolf that seems always to have followed me tracking my light with his own darkness. There is also the lone wolf of my shamanic journeys, a protector, leading me back to my pack. Maybe I need to journey with him, maybe.
My dearest, wisest friend once told me the Cherokee story of a grandfather telling his grandson of the two wolves raging a battle within him. In the simple, modernised version, the white wolf represents all that is good, the compassion, the kindness, love, hope, peace and the black wolf with all that is bad. The rage, envy, bitterness, jealousy and greed. Their battle rages continuously.
“Which wolf wins?” asks the child.
“The wolf that you feed” responds his Grandfather.
My black wolf is on the rampage.
But the true Cherokee message is more nuanced. In the original story the grandfather tells his grandson: “If you feed them right, they both win.”
“You see, son, the white wolf needs the black wolf at his side. To feed only one would starve the other and they will become uncontrollable. To feed and care for both means they will serve you well and do nothing that is not a part of something greater, something good, something of life. Feed them both and there will be no more internal struggle for your attention. And when there is no battle inside, you can listen to the voices of deeper knowing that will guide you in choosing what is right in every circumstance.”1
I won’t get better with catastrophic thinking but the darkness spurs me on, fills me with a tenacity, resourcefulness and courage to keep going. Nor will I get better with toxic positivity and rainbow coloured fantasy. As with all things I must find balance and my own inner voice.
My ears are screaming now, tinnitus a high pitched wail in my head underlined by a grumbling whirring hum and the cars waking up outside my window. Their gentle swoosh on the road outside. My son sleeping next to me. Constant visitor to my bed once more. My legs fizzing and tingling, my body primed to it's every sensation. Wishing only for stillness and peace.
I think back to when this house was surrounded by fields and I wish that this was still true and I could step outside in the quiet dawn dewy grass and keep walking.
Away, away, away from it all.
Filling my lungs with fresh air and birdsong and hope.
I need to get away from here.
I want to run away from it all, find my pack and run with the wolves.
The Original Cherokee Story of Two Wolves, Dr Nicole Poell
Thank you and yes your list is very similar to mine 💜 fibromyalgia also now a possibility. I find myself going round in circles trying to figure it out and probably making it worse. Absolutely agree with that desire and almost compulsion to tell people I'm okay when I'm really not. I cherish the people I can be fully honest with. Sending love x
Oh yes! Knowing which thing it was that really broke your body, I feel that! My list is similar! Glandular fever X2 then ME for a long time, more recently COVID, long COVID & fibromyalgia. Finding how to balance both wolves I really get, I think toxic positivity can do a lot of harm too. Always wanting to say I'm a bit better because that's what people want to hear even if it's not true. I've stopped doing that recently! I find comfort in finding other people with the same experiences, I can see how hard it is for them and I don't judge or feel they're not trying hard enough etc so then it is easier to feel that for myself. You are definitely not alone! X