The body holds what it holds.

A journal entry

Welcome to Fidgets and Fries. Somewhat free. Somewhat not. If you’d like to honor my writings with a monetary contribution, thank you. If you already have, thank you. Your support allows me to invest in my writing in a way I hadn’t thought possible as well as pay for my son’s communication lessons. And if you are still an unpaid subscriber, thank you. Cause in a world where everyone wants their eyes on their work, you still chose to put your gaze on mine. This newsletter rests at the intersection of the unserious ramblings of a woman full of buttered rice and dad jokes and the somewhat sophisticated stories and essays of someone who knows just enough “smart” words to sound super intelligent and insightful.

What will today’s newsletter be? Hmm…

Me, two years younger, wearing a black dress with gold buttons and the septum ring I eventually abandoned cause it was making me sneeze too much, digitally edited to include newspaper clippings, stars, flowers, and bokeh lighting as the background and surroundings.

Is it alright if I journal with you today?

There’s no flow to this. There’s no destination. I don’t know what you’ll gain from this. I don’t even know that I will find purging these thoughts from my mind will result in the release of the bonds my body has collected over the years. 

I don’t know. But I write anyway. 

The body holds what it holds. Told and untold. Seen and unseen. Aware and unaware. Days the brain tells me I am okay. Today, “you are okay.” And “you feel fine.” The body wars against the mind. It holds what you cannot see. You feel what it felt many moons ago but you didn’t register the weight. Every moment your body documents. Tallies on its sheets. Marks on its lists. Categorizing the systems impacted by what you are going through at the time. Your feelings are a marker for its designations. All this, working inside of you, at all times. You feel it as you go through it, but you don’t realize the body maintains meticulous records. So, even though your mind tells you, “you’re fine, today.” Your body may tell you otherwise. 

And I don’t know about you, but my brain doesn’t often work in tandem with my body. And the body will bring down the mind. At least for me it does. Days of calm, stillness, and joy can be disrupted by the wobble in my legs when I stand. Or walk. The sway of my body as it tries to steady itself in the store. The twitch of my eyes as I finally find time to watch my favorite shows. The extra pauses to draw in breath as I speak. The sudden shake within my hands that I can only feel but not visibly see…

How it all feels…medical. And it all feels…in my head. But not in my head. It started in the body. Moved to my head. 

Moved to my head? 

The head felt fine. I felt fine. Until I didn’t. And then my mind took over where my body left off. Abandoning the joy I felt with unease, uncertainty, and compulsive thoughts of impending doom. 

Round and round we go. The brain feels fine. The body does not. The brain follows the body. Now the brain feels as the body does, but makes the body worse. 

Makes the body worse? 

Yeah, makes the body worse. My mind often loses to my body. 

But then again, I can regain some control over how my body feels with distraction. This intense focus in areas outside of my body. The pull of a good book. The drama of a new show. The drives around town with my boys. The planning of a trip. The thoughts of being somewhere outside of where I am. Not just physically, but mentally as well. 

See? This could be something wrong with my body in the “medical, run some tests, give it a diagnosis” way. Or it could be that this body has cataloged so much that even when I feel okay, my body is not. 

Mind controls the body. Body controls the mind. Hardly a one way interaction. They play on each other. And this is what makes it so difficult to figure out. At least in a way that would provide long-term relief. The one body is all I have. It’s carried me through so much. So many health scares. The birth of my beautiful boys. It’s carrying me through being sick right now. 

I cannot figure out how to carry my body in the way that it has carried me. And I fear that what I feel is it’s way of saying, “it’s become too much…”