Probably Nothing

I feel very sick, probably something in the fish I ate this morning, I have been nauseated ever since. Took a Reglan tablet. I was going to write a fiction, I have it in mind, but right now I can’t get past this feeling, this constant almost, as if something is about to happen inside my stomach and then doesn’t, just stays there making everything else unpleasant.

Anyway, it’s probably nothing.

I keep saying that. I don’t know that it’s nothing. I can’t afford treatment, and somehow that becomes part of my reasoning about whether I need treatment, which is ridiculous, I know, the fish doesn’t know my finances, whatever is happening inside me has not been considerate enough to first find out whether this would be a convenient time, and yet I am sitting here trying to persuade myself that because I cannot afford another problem I probably haven’t got one. I have nausea. I have taken a tablet. Perhaps it will settle. I would like it to settle without becoming another thing I have to somehow find the money for, another thing I have to explain, another reminder that even keeping this already rather disappointing organism going is becoming difficult.

I’ve been through worse.

Yes, and? I keep wanting to ask myself that too. What exactly does that establish, that I can suffer, very good, apparently I have some aptitude after all. I would have preferred something that paid.

But I have been through worse and I suppose that is why I say it, because I need something to tell myself while I wait, and I am tired of being frightened by every small thing because every small thing comes attached to the possibility of something I cannot manage. It might just be a bad meal. People have bad meals. People feel sick and recover and go on with whatever they were doing. I would like to be able to leave it there, but I can’t quite leave it there, I keep going back to it, is it getting worse, is it the same, why is it still there, and then I get irritated with myself for doing this because now I have the nausea and my own commentary on the nausea to put up with.

Probably the stench of my thoughts. They have been simmering far too long.

I mean there is only so much of the same old disappointment you can keep stirring before you begin to feel ill at the thought of another helping, and I have been helping myself to it quite generously, haven’t I, where did I go wrong, what am I going to do, how did I end up like this, the same questions until even I don’t want to hear them anymore, and still they come, still I find some slightly different way to ask why I have become so useless at making a life I can actually bear to live.

Then I eat something and feel sick and immediately I am in that whole mess again. I was talking about fish. How did I get from fish to this.

I know feeling sick doesn’t prove anything about my worth. I know. I am so tired of knowing things that do very little to change how they feel. Bipolar II already gives me enough of this, the thinking and the thinking about the thinking, and now the stomach wants to participate, now I cannot even tell whether I am more nauseated because I am anxious or more anxious because I am nauseated. The brain and the gut do affect each other. Unfortunately knowing that doesn’t tell me what is happening today.

I wish I could have one ordinary complaint without immediately dragging my entire existence into it.

And then the ugly thought comes that nobody would care even if I died. I know “nobody” is too much. I know I am saying it from inside this feeling, but it is there, and I don’t want to pretend it isn’t there just because it makes the paragraph uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable to have it. To feel so little consequence attached to yourself that even being ill starts to seem like something you ought to apologize for, sorry, yes, still here, still requiring food and oxygen, and now I would also like to stop feeling as though I am about to throw up, if that isn’t asking too much.

I don’t even want to make a joke out of that. It comes out that way because I don’t know what else to do with it.

Anyway. The fish.

Could have been the fish. I don’t know. I am not going to suddenly know because I have written three paragraphs being suspicious of it. But you hear about formalin being used on fish and then of course that enters your head too, because apparently buying something to eat now includes wondering whether somebody has been trying to preserve it past the point where it ought to be sold. There have been documented concerns about this. I have no idea whether my fish had anything of the sort in it. That is another thing I cannot establish by sitting here feeling sick.

But it is a disgusting thought, isn’t it, that you might pay for food and receive something somebody has chemically persuaded to continue looking like food. I wanted to eat. I wasn’t volunteering to help settle a dispute between decomposition and commerce.

And yes, now I am making it worse by thinking about that.

Come to think of it, it could also have something to do with the pollution. I have had breathing problems and nausea in winter before. Maybe the fish aggravated something, maybe I am putting unrelated things together because I want an explanation, because having a reason would at least give me something to be angry with besides myself. Pollution can aggravate breathing problems; it doesn’t follow that it explains this nausea. I don’t have an answer. I keep coming back to the same few possibilities and none of them becomes more useful on the fourth visit.

I wanted to write today.

That is what keeps annoying me, underneath all this other complaining, I had something I wanted to do, something I could still do even with everything else as it is, and now I am spending the time thinking about my stomach. I don’t want to make some grand claim for the fiction, I just wanted to write it, to follow the idea for a while without everything coming back to what is wrong with me and what I cannot afford and why I cannot seem to get my life into a condition where a little physical discomfort can remain little.

Perhaps it will pass soon. I hope so. I am saying hope now because probably has begun to sound dishonest.

I should stop. If the breathing becomes difficult or the sickness gets worse, I need to get help; I cannot make that unnecessary by being unable to afford it. I know that too. I wish knowing what needs doing made doing it less difficult.

Happy septic Maha Saptami, sinners.

I’ll write the fiction if I feel better later. I was going to tell you a little about it, but no, let me stop, I really do feel sick.