Illness as Metaphor

Illness as Metaphor

I have a friend who is also on sabbatical this year. A few weeks ago, we met in Richmond, a half-way point between our homes. We drove some errands, and then thought about places we might settle in for conversation. I suggested that we drive down by the river, and go for a stroll in the woods along the bank.

My friend pulled up her shirt sleeve, to show me the ravages of simultaneous attacks of chiggers and poison ivy. We decided the great outdoors weren’t so great at the moment, and headed for a well paved parking lot outside a marble and concrete building. On the way, she told me about the agony of itching, and laughed about metaphor of things getting under her skin.

A few weeks later—and two weeks ago—the wages of the wilderness hit me, as well. Somewhere, I picked up a tick that gave me Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. After months of meditation during which I failed to clear my mind, I found myself spending an entire week unable to hold a string of thought together, lurching from sleep to naps to sleep again, getting up only to go to the bathroom or change my sweat-soaked clothes. Not exactly Nirvana, but a definite break from the constant stream of consciousness I had been unable to interrupt.

As I’ve recovered, I’ve found myself asking that illness as metaphor question: Just what has snuck up and set its secret teeth in me these days? What’s been drinking down my life-force, while slipping toxins in?

Jesus promises: just ask, and you’ll get answers. And answers did shine forth, taking on depth and sharpened edges the way that objects, on a cloudy day, will, all of a sudden POP into dimension when the sun escapes the shielding cloud.

It’s all the ancient crap—the baggage from my childhood and adolescence that still shapes how I react to my own grown-up world, even if the fad of Freud and pop psychology has passed.

I had a lover once who was a competitive body-builder. With all her bulging, ripply strength, she was concerned she couldn’t be a tender lover. She didn’t have to worry—her fear led her to compensate, and hers were among the softest caresses I have ever felt. It’s been my experience that most folks already carry—and use—treatments for their deepest fears. The writer who was most unsure about her writing braided together the most beautiful prose; the girl who feared losing her independence to a lover was among the most uncompromising character’s with whom I’ve ever dealt.

Sometimes, our self-created treatments aren’t much better than the first disease.

In my case, because I’ve not yet managed to pluck off the parasite of ancient injury, I wrestle with a constant tentativeness—to which I react through reckless action. I scan my circumstance for danger, and find it everywhere. Unwilling to be paralyzed, I act impulsively instead. I have walked away from lovers, jobs, houses, towns, and children. I have burned bridges, and I’ve been called bold, and brave. It isn’t really courage, though—it’s deep despair. In the certainty that nothing will work out as I would hope, a certain relativity sets in. If everything is doomed to fail, anything will do.

Like my tick-borne illness, this reactive way of acting has exhausted me. I lit out for a life unknown three weeks ago—and was stymied by the traffic. Some of the glue that has kept Girlfriend and me together through these weeks is simple weariness—and weirdly, I am grateful for the dragging of my feet. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever is not so big a deal, once you treat it—but let it go a few days long, and you can die from it. I’m beginning to feel much the same about this fearfulness I’m carrying—it’s time to find a real cure, before it leads me to a recklessness in which I’ll lose what matters most to me.