equilibrium
content notes: babies, bodies, food, periods
I met with my dietitian today yesterday. I asked her how she's been doing. She's reached the six-month mark, and she is only barely beginning to show.
"That so does not surprise me," I blurted. I hesitated. My dietitian talked while I attempted to recalibrate. Her jeans were tighter, she said, but she didn't think she would have to buy any new clothes. During a conversational lull, I tried again: "I don't know how to say this. I know we've only met on Zoom, but I feel like I know exactly what you look like?"
"I'm tall," my nutritionist said.
"Yeah," I said. "And you have kind of a long torso maybe?" She nodded.
"Did you dance?" I asked her.
"No," she said, "but when I was growing up everyone asked if I danced." I laughed. "Yeah," she continued, "I have a longer torso, and I think I also carry low?"
"Right!" I said. "So if you're wearing a dress with a high waist, no one is gonna notice anything until it's time for baby to come out." It's as if the child is being held below the fold. I looked at myself, in a smaller inset video frame, then back at my dietitian. "I think it's probably your neck. I think that's how I can tell. See how mine is short? You can tell I'm stumpy. I'm five-two; everything shows." All of my internal processes occur above the fold, it seems, even when I am trying to hide them.
She laughed and nodded. "I haven't ever thought about it, but yes," she said. She remarked that some people are a surprise—that they visually 'read' tall, from Zoom calls, when they are in fact not. But she herself does 'read' tall, she agreed, and I do 'read' short. In retrospect, I realize we were practically discussing somatotypes. Most people don’t fit cleanly into a type, but my dietitian and I both might.
My real task, during this appointment with my dietitian (and every appointment with her), was to discuss my diet. The night before, I'd ordered Korean food. I have not been feeling well—a migraine, along with some other stuff that occurs cyclically—so I'd "let my period do the ordering." My dietitian nodded.
It was probably too much food. I was reaching for a last bite when I got really dizzy and almost passed out. "I think there must've been pressure on the vagus nerve, so probably like vasovagal syncope," I said neutrally, shrugging. Maybe, maybe not. ("I think that's my sign that I'm done," I'd said aloud to my friend then, a little panicky. "I think that's my sign to drink some water.")
My dietitian nodded. "Did you try your ear thing?" she asked me.
It was an interesting idea. "No!" I said. "No, I didn't. It's in my purse right now."
The way the "ear thing" works—a Zōk—is with suction. You squeeze the balloon, stick the tube in your ear, and get a good vacuum seal. Then you tug on the device. This action wiggles the tympanic membrane (or "eardrum"), essentially "venting" the ear. In theory, this should allow pressure on the inside of the ear to equalize with the pressure on the outside of the ear. Supposedly this can help with migraines, but it doesn't work for everyone. It works for me. It also isn't the first device I've purchased to pop my own ears, but it's more effective than a battery-operated device. Unfortunately, my dog likes to eat Zōks.
Hmm. "Do you remember," I asked my dietitian, "about when we first moved in?" I'd told her this story before, but now I was reevaluating it. The house we'd purchased was hermetically sealed, practically impervious to the elements. We sometimes had gnats sneaking into the house through the sink drains, but that was about it.
One morning, shortly after moving in, we'd awakened to discover that the glass doors to the back patio had shattered in the night. We were stunned.
At the time, I'd googled it. I'd concluded that it was caused by unequal pressure: either the house's internal pressure was higher than the external environment's, or it was the other way around. "The house popped its own ears," I said, incredulously. (This might not actually be what happened, but it sure seemed like it at the time.)
"I didn't have migraines until we moved there," I said quietly.
I thought, fleetingly, about the cultural hostility of Florida—of PSI, or pound per square inch—wondering if I’d lacked the internal resilience to match the external pressure system. I wondered if my emotional, metaphorical head had also been imploding, like a crumpled deep-sea submarine. Or maybe it was the other way around: the intercranial pressure had become too high. I remember how I’d feel along the seam of my skull’s fontanelles a lot, where the crown of my head had been weirdly tender.
Earlier, just before my appointment with my dietitian, I'd visited my primary-care provider for what could be the last time. Every time could be the last time, I guess. At the end, my PCP had walked me out to the lobby. She'd blinked away tears. "We can still do video calls," she'd said. She'd faltered. "I am going to see you again," she'd said to me very firmly, "so I am not going to do this."
"I'll miss you too," I'd said.
"Aw," said my dietitian as I recounted this.
"Yeah," I said to her. "It wasn't until I got outside that I started crying. I said 'I'm just so grateful to her!' I said it out loud, because I should've said it to her when I was still inside. Then there was someone else on the sidewalk, so I had to get it together."
As I said this, a few MacOS notifications dropped down from the right-corner of my computer monitor: it was almost two hours later, and yet my PCP was still doing stuff for me in the background. The notifications were sync'd with my smartphone, coming from the medical app.
"Anyway," I said to my dietitian, "my blood pressure was totally normal." I've forgotten or neglected to take the medication that manages my blood pressure for several days now.
"What was it?" my dietitian asked.
"One fourteen over eighty," I said.
"That's pretty good," she said.
"It's better than it is on medication," I said.
"What is it on medication."
"Like one thirty." Sometimes 140.
She nodded. "Why do you think that is?"
I sighed. "Equilibrium?" I said, a little helplessly.
I tried to choose my words carefully. "I am feel as if I am being compelled—no, redirected—to find equilibrium. In all things," I clarified. "So much is split into a false binary, a this-or-that choice, and there is almost always a secret path up the middle."
My dietitian nodded thoughtfully. Then she spoke. I can't remember exactly how she phrased this, but I remember she communicated with her hands:
"The human body has its ways. The body is always trying to reach equilibrium," she said, bringing her hands together to meet in the middle.
Lately my posts are all out of order. I've been writing two other posts that would have been an organic logical build-up to "boundaries are the only virtue," but I haven't finished them yet.
Similarly, I started writing "mother wound" right after "oh deer," but I ended up posting five times in the interim. Hopefully this doesn't make my blog too illegible. I don't know. It really doesn't matter that much, except to me, since I'm trying to chart my own path.