My Body is Not a Brand

Bearing witness to pain without performing it

Last spring I put out a question to my women followers on Instagram wherein I queried “What has been a good health shift or appointment for you once you hit forty?” They delivered. I compiled a complete list, putting what was recommended highest at the top and then the rest in descending order. Top recommendation: dermatologist. Second: mammogram. Third: walking. And so on. Halfway down the list: acupuncture.

Last night, after I rubbed a glob of cream on my face and two pumps of progesterone on my forearms, downed my magnesium, finished my glass of water, and read two more chapters of my book, I began what has become a little nightly ritual for me as I’ve drifted off to sleep over the past year: I counted all the hard things I didn’t quit.¹

Sarah Bessey

wrote a post last January where she used the phrase “self care isn’t just self comfort,” and I felt my gut turn in the way it only does when it is saying to me: pay attention to this, you’re going to need it later. I’m an Enneagram 9, self-comfort is what I do best. Give me an oversized sweatshirt, a warm drink, a good tv series and I dare anyone to numb out better than I. But Sarah’s post was about health, about “pulling levers,” and about caring for her body without capitulating to its basest desires.²

2023 was a bit of a wake-up call for me. I declared it the year of health and actual self-care (as in go to the dentist, the doctor, the gynecologist, the optometrist, etc. etc. etc.). In hindsight my declaration was a bit premature or perhaps optimistic, but no one can accuse me of not trying.

I grew up in a large family where frugality was a moral imperative and where healthcare was more along the lines of stick this clove of garlic in your ear or swallow this fish oil and, unless it’s visibly broken or gushing blood, suck it up. A mostly non-interventionist kind of healthcare. I’m not complaining, I credit this upbringing for the reason my pain tolerance is through the roof. Which is why in the throes of Covid last June, when I was also doubled over in pain, vomiting all kinds of foul things up, my husband had to make the decision that we were going to the hospital whether I liked it or not.³

I have to be in so much pain that I’m powerless to resist. Or, said another way, I have always practiced whatever the opposite of preventative healthcare is.

So, armed with the phrase “Self-care is not just self-comfort,” I called every doctor and made every appointment for 2023. I got every cavity filled. I got my boobs scanned. I got my lady-parts stretched, scraped, poked and prodded. I went to more eye doctor appointments in 2023 than I’ve gone to in my life, one of which had me laying on a table staring at a green dot while my corneas were sliced and lifted and lasered. I got my blood tested, my hormones tested, my thyroid tested, my hearing tested. I started working with a nutritionist. I wore my Apple watch and got my steps in, evaluated my sleep, and lowered my blood pressure. I started taking magnesium, I tracked my protein and drank glasses and glasses and glasses of water. I starting taking a probiotic and upped my vitamin D and added in ashweganda. I mostly stopped using tampons and started using period underwear. I even went above and beyond and got my appendix removed for extra credit.⁴

I did all the things and I still feel like crud. I actually feel worse than I did a year ago. Getting a diagnosis of Hypothyroidism and Hashimoto’s in March almost felt like a relief as it explained all the mystery symptoms that felt like they were ruing my life, but a diagnosis is not a cure.

We had our annual soul care retreat with my little group of writers in January, all of us in our forties, all of us in the bewildering and varied time that is perimenopause, all of us well versed in the phrase “You too? Me too.”

Someone asked me recently, “When was the last time you felt like yourself?” and I had no answer. I cannot remember.

Bewildering is the only word I have to describe for my body in my forties. She often feels like a stranger to me. She has newfound emotions and pockets of anger and pains in places she didn’t know existed before. She sleeps fitfully and feels uncomfortable in her skin and bones and muscles. She can’t eat the things she’s always eaten or at least the things that made her feel good before. She thinks things she never thought before, things she never thought she’d think before. Jane Kenyon wrote of the body, calling our relationship with it “this difficult friendship,” and that has never felt more true than today.

A few months ago

Kaya Oakes

wrote about the kind of performative pain I’ve written about here too. We all know the types, those who either inflate their common maladies (stretch marks, a bit of a belly, occasional sadness, peri-menopause ;) ) as a narrative tool or those, like Scamanda, who create an entire narrative around a fake illness. But something I think about a lot too is when we don’t just inflate the common or make up the uncommon, but when we actually are making ourselves sicker for the clicks. She writes,

Now that I’m done with chemo (the poisoning phase) and waiting to start radiation (the phase where I get burnt to a crisp) and a whole mess of pills (the side effect of one is, charmingly, listed as “uncontrolled diarrhea”), I’ve been slowly blocking a lot of people on social media who have made their illness into a kind of brand. This isn’t because I don’t empathize with the fact that capitalism forces all of us to have some kind of hustle, or that I don’t understand that the American healthcare system is functionally broken, sending people into massive debt just so they can stay alive. It’s more that the creeping discomfort I’ve felt most of my life with strangers trauma dumping in bars, at airports, or in essays and books has gotten worse since I got sick. This tendency to overshare, exacerbated by the internet, feels even more uncomfortable now that I’m seriously ill myself. And it’s because in some ways we are expected to tell everyone that we are sick. What was once private is now public, and it can be psychologically devastating to decide how to navigate this new reality.

Maybe it’s cruel to infer that some make themselves sicker for the clicks, but at our basest, we are no better than dogs and bells in our search for whatever makes us feel good. If our bodies aren’t feeling good, it is our human nature to look for hits of dopamine that make us feel momentarily good. A like will do it, a share will make it last a little longer. Pretty soon, whatever it is that conditioned us for the hit will become like second nature. We play the same chord again and again because we’re addicted to the sliver of relief it offers. Some, as Oakes wrote, “make their illness into a brand.” Others make that brand into a business where they help others process their illness or pain or hurt while they’re still very much processing their own.

I’ve been asking myself the question, “How do we know how to get well unless we know others who have also been unwell?” Especially with the mess that is insurance and healthcare right now. (Short story: Over the past year Nate has had a frustrating issue that again and again he was prescribed the same antibiotic for and the same regimen to rid himself of the issue. It reached its peak in January. He was miserable, I was miserable because he was miserable, and so I took to the google, and realized that it was possible he was misdiagnosed and the regimen and medications he was instructed to use were actually making it worse. I made a list. Sent him to the drugstore for a few very simple supplies, and within a day he had relief, within a week the issue was gone. If any of the four medical professionals had actually had or taken the time to ask him questions, listen to him, and delve into his and his family’s medical history, I have no doubt this would have been resolved a year ago instead of misdiagnosed repeatedly.)

I’m thankful for modern western medicine. I’ve been the grateful recipient of it more times than I can count, but in last year’s whole Year of Health, I can actually count the full amount of actual time I’ve spent with a professional. I can probably count on one or two hands how many questions in total I’ve been asked by them—and I don’t think that’s necessarily their fault. But after all this, I still feel like crud. How can I start to feel better?