Almost three months have slipped by since I last blogged – so quickly – ah, so quick. But as always in my silences, a tumult of life has been crashing on through, and I’ve been scrambling up the avalanche as best I can without time to sit around composing and broadcasting my thoughts.
But then a point is reached…
Three weeks ago I was doing my damnedest not to admit to myself that I was, yet again, alarmingly near the point of collapse. My much-envied eternal youth was threatening to shatter like a dry snail shell, hollowed out from the inside by the incidental death of its poor inhabitant. In near-constant and crippling pain from arthritis, chronic muscular fatigue and assorted obscure toxicities, my digestive system inflamed and semi-functional, my belly swollen, my skin erupting randomly, my mind increasingly woolly and my moods mostly wretched, all I really thought tangible enough to seek help for was the coloured phlegm I’d been coughing for months. It didn’t seem to be clearing up, and for a singer that’s not good.
I tried to write a blog entry at the time, but it was incoherent, painful and quite unpublishable. The only sentence worth saving was this one:
Run ragged with no-brainer work, low pay, needy family and some fairly hard play, I stumble as Time drop-tackles me from behind.
Barrel of laughs. But my singing teacher gave me the number of a doctor whom she recommended in the strongest terms as a skilled diagnostician trained in Eastern as well as Western modalities. I went to see this woman, who has a clinic in the CBD once a week and does not bulk-bill. She was small, compact, wise and sweet, frightfully expensive and worth every cent. My first consultation ran for an hour, during which she collected all sorts of data from how many cigarettes I’d ever smoked in my life to what cleaning products we use in the house and who prescribed my reflux medication. Her advice was as follows: stop eating wheat, dairy products, fungi, nightshades (tomatoes, capsicum and eggplant), and sugar including fruit and alcohol for a while, and see what happens. She took a blood sample to do allergy tests and told me to come back in a couple of weeks.
Wheat, dairy, sugar. I’ve been eating these things daily since before I had teeth. All these years boasting of a cast-iron stomach… but by this time I was so sick, weak and weary that any concrete advice was a relief. The change wasn’t so much a chore as a revolution.
And a revelation. Within 48 hours I could feel a difference in my stomach, although that was probably mostly the nightly probiotics and slippery elm she’d put me on. But within a week I was startled to notice that the base note of grief that has been part of my psyche for… how long? several years, certainly – was gone. Just like that.
That was more than startling – it was shocking. These last few years I’ve had plenty to grieve over, from acute personal losses to the parlous state of the planet, from the debacle of my career to the scandals of global politics, from individual slights and stupidities to the cosmic irredeemability of humankind. I’ve been on and off antidepressants; I’ve done what I could to work through the build-up of anger and bitterness; I’ve drawn comfort from what I can do and been praised for my ability to soldier on. But even with new cycles and perspectives, even with new hope on the world stage and new opportunities for my own development, I couldn’t seem to shake the underlying persistent unhappiness, stress and anxiety.
Eventually defeat becomes self-perpetuating, as with each failure to beat the demon you watch yourself falling back exhausted into the same weaknesses, all temporary panaceas encouraging apathy and subduing even the spur of desperation. In the end, despite the modest achievements of survival, there is only more of the same to endure, and I was staring down absolute failure. I was spent. I was like dying. I had had way more than a gutful.
Only it was so simply literal, that gutful. I’ve passed the last couple of weeks in a kind of dumbfounded joy as each day, at random moments, I check for the familiar veils of darkness and find only light, probe for the pain, and touch a placid new understanding. My body is restoring itself to health (the blood tests showed I have intolerances rather that actual allergies, and apparently the constitution of a horse). To my inexpressible relief and delight, my waist has returned to its proper slenderness, which is no mere vanity but the overthrow of a significant personal and professional disadvantage. I feel like I’ve shrugged off a scarred and scabby old layer and emerged lithe and ready, still somewhat surprised.
My friends, I stand before you a new woman. Though I guess I look a lot like the old one – just slimmer and more energetic, and in a much better mood.
