I'm buried alive and everything is going to change

Charting a path out of mind-body destruction

I had a vision today. It was something that I’d spent years not wanting to look at. Literally years of playing mental games with myself just to not look at it. Years of pretending like maybe I didn’t need to look at it because maybe it’s not actually that important.

This vision has been trying to enter my consciousness for so long, like a home invader who’s been circling my block, studying my moves, just waiting for the right moment to slide in so it could tie me up and force me to look at it. 

Today it found the opening to move in. I felt exhausted and at the end of my rope. I’ve been on the endless circuit of doctors and health practitioners and tests and supplements for weeks with small improvements here and there, but no real answers or solutions in sight.

This isn’t my first rodeo with mysterious health issues that no one understands. It’s more like I’ve been in one long, terrible rodeo for 15 years while simultaneously being in three extra terrible, near-death rodeos in the last 7 years. 

The thing about chronic illness is that there are levels to how much it cracks open your conception of reality. You start out going to regular doctors, then slowly realize they know absolutely nothing. Then you move into functional doctors and integrative medicine until you realize they only know slightly more but are still sort of putting a bandaid on a bullet wound. Then you move into Eastern medicine like Traditional Chinese Medicine and acupuncture, and you start to think, “Wow, they understand things on a much deeper level,” but then it’s been months and you’re a little better but still sort of stuck in the same loop of symptoms with no end in sight. 

Some people, the ones who are holding on tight to the dominant narrative about what health and reality are, will throw up their arms at this point and surrender. They’ll say, “I tried everything and it didn’t work so now I’m just chronically ill for the rest of my life and that’s it.” 

Then there are people like me. People who will consistently crack open every belief they have in search of any answer. Nothing is too insane for me. Maybe this is all ancestral patterns living inside me. Maybe my body is just exceptional at keeping the score. Energy medicine? Let’s go. Quantum healing? Why the hell not. Shamanic entity removal? Pokemon that shit and catch them all. I’m in.

In the process of leaving no stone unturned in the pursuit of health, I’ve had to become radically honest with myself. What worked, what didn’t. What did I wish worked because it would be an easier story to tell others, what did I wish would have not worked so well because it’s too difficult to explain.

What I’ve found is that while not all of the energetic medicines are a slam dunk, they’ve been some of the more effective treatment options that I’ve had. If I carefully and objectively analyze what has moved the needle and tangibly improved symptoms the most, it’s never once been the board-certified specialist at Cedars Sinai. It’s always been someone who deals in the realms of vibrational or energetic medicine. Most recently, it’s been homeopathy that’s moved mountains for me.

But this isn’t where the story ends, it’s where it begins. A couple of weeks ago I went from a state of full-body pain and inflammation, with all the symptoms of a heart attack, unable to eat anything without having an allergic reaction to an immediate 70% improvement with just some homeopathic remedies. With such a dramatic and immediate improvement I had to ask myself some difficult questions. 

The primary question is: If it’s true that my discordant energetic state is responsible for my health issues, then what is it that I’m thinking and doing every day that’s putting me here? 

I meditated on this question during a walk this afternoon and pressed myself to find words for how I feel about my life, in general, right now. The only words that came to me were I feel like I’m buried alive. 

As the weight of these words hit me, so did the vision of what has been burying me. I’ve felt buried by internal conflicts, fears, insecurities, rage, and limitations. Buried by ideas I don’t execute and dreams I feel no closer to. No one else has put me here, and no one else can get me out. 

I saw very clearly that no amount of doctors or treatments or homeopathy would be able to permanently keep me in a state of perfect health if I’m still living a life in which I’m still actively burying myself alive. 

There are no other secret answers for why someone who tests as mostly normal and lives a meticulously healthy lifestyle but who feels like death might be this way. There is no new remedy or acupuncture point or pill coming to save me. There is only clawing my way out of the grave one handful of dirt at a time by shifting my thoughts and my actions.

The truth is that I’ve suppressed myself out of fear for so long. I have hundreds of pages of writing sitting on my Google Drive that I’ve felt too paralyzed to share. I have so many docs full of so many ideas that I’ve never even taken one step with. I’ve played every mental game with myself for years, telling myself that one day I’ll magically feel ready and, of course, the day is coming but not today. 

Every day I put off doing what needed to be done while waiting for the perfect time was like burying myself a little deeper in a grave of my own making. 

No more. 

I cannot go any deeper. 

I’ll endure whatever discomfort comes from putting myself and my ideas out there and in the process, I’ll put my theory to the test that what I’m experiencing with my health is from my own doing or lack of doing. 

I’ll publish things that don’t feel fully baked or like they’re the most perfect version of what they could be. And I’ll learn things in the process. I’ll learn more than I did by never putting it out there at all.

Everything has to change because I don’t think my body can withstand it staying the same anymore.

And if I’m wrong, I’ll be the first one to admit that I was spectacularly wrong. But if I’m right then maybe I have a chance at feeling normal in my body again.

Let’s see what happens.