When the body shuts down

The first time that it happened, I was writhing in pain, spent the night bent over my stomach, foetal position, or body turned upside down hoping to make it go away.
As soon as the morning came, I managed to bring myself to the internist's clinic, where the internist asked me to go to the radiologist to take a couple of tests. I still remember the soothing hum of the air conditioner, the subdued lighting, the total silence  inside the radiology room, as the radiologist puzzled over what she saw on the computer, asking me over and over to locate the pain. 

"I could not see anything wrong with your body," she said. 

After a while, she asked, "Are you experiencing some kind of stress?"

When I replied, she refused to believe it. "How could you be so stressed in a job that you've been doing over and over again in the last 15 years?"

So, I told her.

Close to midnight last Thursday, after about three hours of waiting, I sat squatting on the floor maybe more than an hour into the press con when the first pain shot up, a signal from space. I made it a point to take a rest that night; and the following day, working up three or four stories at the same time, I knew that I was operating on a low energy level but still believed that my remaining energy could still last me through the end of those stories when I could finally declare a  rest. 

Unfortunately, though, just a sight of one message after the end of the third story, shot my cortisol level up to the roof.  Something must have burst there somewhere because, although, I managed to crawl myself to finish the fourth story, I was no longer myself afterwards.  

The pain is back again.

Diary of Pain

Inquirer newsroom on the 3rd floor. Chino Roces. 2017.

I have decided to embark on a project--or a journey--whatever you may want to call it, to expunge this very bad thing that is bothering me. The first thing that I will do is to download some of the photographs that have been clogging my icloud for a very long time and talk about them to expunge their power. Stop them from bothering me. Leave them behind in a place where they should be: that is, in a limbo where they could not exert power over me.

But a voice within me warns: Not in limbo! That place could be tricky, shadowy, those demons could assume many dimensions and could come back to you in another form!

So, I will bring all of them into the light!  So that I could look and examine them and see them for what they are! 

For example, that particular shot where a dark chair outside framed an illuminated newsroom. That's where I waited for the call that never came many years ago. It was maybe, past 8 p.m. or was it almost 9, I was already done with the work at the newsroom and was preparing to go home. But I sat there waiting for the call. It never came. I looked at the shining metal frames of the glass windows surrounding me and felt their efficient coldness; rendering work in the newsroom was sheer efficiency. I long for the warmth of that call that never came. The warmth of home.

Then, I realised that no one was helping me. No one was taking my side, no one was backing me up.  That photograph was taken five years ago. 

Last night, I talked to my sister. I rarely visited them now because doing so would distress me so bad it would take me days and months to recover. But I went there prepared. I thought I could shield myself from whatever distressing things that they might have to say.

Then slowly it came, innocently, and right in the middle of the conversation. I was telling her how before, in my twenties and in the midst of the circumstances I was facing, I had given up pursuing a particular path. Then, she cut in and said, "Had you become a lawyer, you would already have had so many enemies by now." She laughed a long, hard laugh that scrunched her face, made her look very ugly. 

I could not understand why she said it, where such unfair and wrong notion came. I did not know how to answer. Stunned, I merely stared at her. 

Now it dawns on me. They always view me as a troublemaker.  This is a badge of honor as a journalist, but if you hear your sisters telling you that in a totally misconstrued and negative way, I wonder what would you feel? I should lessen my contact with them as much as possible.