What is your relationship with HEALTH?

[RALA]

Is general physical well-being a big focus of your life?
Do you struggle with it or do you find it easy maintaining it?



My experience:

I am someone who has and have always had an extreme fear of poor health. And the reason behind this is because, for me, physical (and mental health to some degree too) health has always translated to STRENGTH into my psych, and strength is part of my identity, of who I am. I have a sx 6w7 fix and the ''strength and beauty'' associated with this type has always resonated with me. These are two extremely important things for me and they both have an important foundation: HEALTH. You can't have those two without having good health. And so when I faced some pretty bad health issues years ago and I became extremely physically weak, my whole world collapsed and it kept on collapsing as if there was no actual bottom to my despair. I've always had a stubborn nature though and I would torture myself both physically and mentally by refusing to accept reality and so I would put myself through extremely long and tiring exercises. I would force my body to complete long runs and it would take me HOURS because I had to stop every 2 minutes or so, my body was just too frail and weak. When I look back at it now, I feel a lot of shame for working against myself basically, but the denial was just too strong. I couldn't accept I was weak because it brought me so much shame.

To me, being frail and weak, and therefore ugly as well because it affected my appearance, meant being powerless, helpless. You see, it all has to do with power for me I believe. I need to be strong and I need to be beautiful because it gives me power. And then I am not scared and I am not ashamed anymore. I type at 9w1 and power has always been a big theme in my life. Of course an unconscious one until the past few years. I was born with a big sense of power, I remember feeling like a fucking force and like I could do anything. But then, as I grew up, I found myself in situations where I was proven the opposite. A lot of abuse and past trauma but the details are not important, the big picture is. Throughout my childhood and teen years I became overwhelmed with a sense of powerlessness that simply broke me. Again, I couldn't accept it. And this exact refusal and inability to accept it made me get stuck in it, constantly running against the currents. It is when I stopped, turned around and looked the demon in the eye that I saw a real glimpse of light for the first time in forever. And then I found even more demons to deal with: I felt stupid and angry for being the way I was. Angry at who I was. Always angry at something, and all because I cannot ACCEPT. And I cannot accept because I am often too ashamed to LOOK. And this is a very shameful thing for me and a very hard thing to come to terms with. But I think as long as I can admit to it and be aware to it, that there is a bigger chance for me to fall less into that habit and succeed more at breaking the wheel.

[Mahat]

I think I always took my health for granted. I've always been physically strong, healthy, and rarely got sick which I attribute to both good genes and upkeep (more so when I was younger than now). While I'm still very healthy, the older I get the more I realize how much of a precious thing my health is, and how I need to take better care of myself NOW or else the bad choices that I've made now will catch up to me later. The prospect of me being fat (I'm already overweight), ugly, old plus add in mental decline in the future devastates me to the core. It's a cataclysmic fear of mine. That to me signifies the erasure of my identity as both my relationship to myself and to how I am seen (or unseen) by the world. I want to age with grace and dignity but the spectre of entropy always looms over. This is a huge reason why I hate being embodied. Having a body means being at the mercy of time, gravity, and decay, and I'm starting to see the gap between the persistence of my mind and the changes my body is growing through. Sometimes I wish I was a brain in a vat. The body, I see, is a thing to overcome, a thing I have to constantly contend with, both in my personal relationship towards it and as a field of signifiers to the world around me. These issues come to the fore in the realm of attraction and dating as my body is no longer part of the I-self relation, where the body is entirely mine, but now is part of the I-thou relation- it's subject to the gaze, and thus judgment, of the Other. So now I see myself through the eyes of the Other, and my body is no longer in my domain.

While, I have always been physically healthy, my mental health has been through some ups and down. I have bipolar II disorder, had both suicidal and homicidal ideation, and did a stint in the psyche ward for a bit. Medications have helped tremendously but I need a stronger foundation to rest my mental health on. I'm working on more effective psychotechnologies to practice on.

[Animal]

am ii too jagged
or is the world too perfectly round?
sometimes ii feel like everyone else is lost
and ii, alone, am found
but if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it
does it make a sound?
that question is what keeps me
so tightly bound.

https://ericaxenne.com/1999/01/the-s...ed-to-silence/

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The poems & pics are from around 1999. I don't know what else to say about my health, the loss of my voice, and the endless struggle to make my dreams manifest while having to fight for basic functions like breathing, walking and sleeping. I don't know how to explain, in just one post, the spiritual journey of losing everything, starting over while hitting constant walls, and learning acceptance and serenity. Maybe one day soon, I'll find the words to sum this up. For now I'll share an old post.

__________________________________________

Control

By Erii | LymeSPOILER

__________________________________________

The most essential lesson I've learned is that if I want to survive, let alone thrive, I must accept that my own personal path is not entirely in my control. This is counter to my nature, but I've been challenged to accept it. My battle with physical health has forced me to integrate some surrender.

When I was sick as a teen, I had 105 fevers and could not function at all. I knew I might die. But one thing I remember clearly is the thought that "I might die - and that's ok. I accept it. But I'm going to fight with everything I have, because I still have songs to sing." When I emerged, I had lost my voice - but the point remains. I am still a vessel through which passion emerges; I just needed to shape and polish the vessel from scratch, because I lost my voice. I set out to do that, and it was a fight, a journey, a transformation. The ghost of my voice came back from the grave for a few years and allowed me to sing through my whisper. Though my training and determination played a big part in allowing this to happen, the opportunity itself was nothing short of a miracle. But I knew it wouldn't last and illness would catch up with me again. This time, I was able to accept that, and follow the path I dreamed of until I couldn't anymore. When my whispery voice stopped working, I was able to let go and transfer my passion to my writing. I am not quite done with music yet - because I've written two more albums that need to be recorded - but I'm able to be patient and trust that if I remain focused, the time to record the albums will come.

I have always been a control freak in the sense that I'm aware of my own vision, my power and my determination. I intend to live my dreams at any cost and I feel deep down that I, alone, have that power. But the biggest real psychological change that I have undergone is that I've learned to appreciate that there is a scheme out there greater than me, and in part, it will shape my destiny - no matter what I do. I make my flow and the flow makes me. I can surrender to God, the universe and the cycle of life and death, while still fighting for my own dream. The two are not mutually exclusive. Surrender is part of victory.

[Daeva]

I wish I could take one pill and be forever healthy and not think about it ever again. (It bores me.)

Deus Ex Machina: Health.

[[redacted]]

Talk of healthiness puts me off at a visceral level.

...Well, I don't actually mind when I'm visiting the doctor, but doctors are typically pretty matter-of-fact about it. Otherwise, people can be so weird... Not even sure how to explain it, but it can get creepy, like they are fetishizing the idea of wholesomeness. Feel like my family is that way, and it kinda traumatized me.

In a way I can be blind about it, because it doesn't quite register that it has an effect on things.

[[redacted]]

I mean, I was thinking about how I don't like to focus on the subject of health because it's too dry and clinical, but then I realized that I prefer for it to remain a dry topic if you HAVE to talk about it, while getting moralistic or emotional about it is never helpful.

[Princess of Hearts]

Hate that it's a thing, I have enough of my own problems and now my body wants me to take care of it too?
Really hate how fragile human body and life is, it feels like the least important thing in the world, yet you can't not worry about it because it affects everything else. And nothing you can do is anything compared to what time can do.


I also hate healthiness talk, I used to take my relatively good health for granted and never thought things like food, sleep, etc. made any difference, made fun of the idea all the time, if you're meant to be healthy you're healthy and if you're not then that's just how it is, but the older I get I am starting to see my lack of care is already catching up with me.


There's also an issue of just how wrong it feels to be focusing on it, there's a sense of...I shouldn't have to focus on it: I'm not meant to be spending hours at the gym but clearly my body thinks I am, I love ice cream but it just makes me fat and god knows what else, I love the sun so much but all it wants to do is give me skin cancer, etc.

[PleasureToBurn]

I don't really think about it unless it's affecting me. Usually stomach issues, asthma, lower back pain, and I think I have sciatica now too. Aside from looking good, the only other reason I work out is to keep my back strong so it doesn't affect me later in life.

As far as mental health goes, I have precautions in place if things ever get really bad.

I should probably care more about my health, but I just don't.