One of the things my therapist talked about early on in our sessions — and something that I didn’t quite get for awhile — was how things felt. I thought she was talking about emotions, because this was therapy and surely that’s what you talk about in therapy, but no; she was talking about how things felt physically. She’d ask me how my body felt after particularly stressful or emotional moments, and I’d offer some variation on, I don’t know, I wasn’t really paying attention, and she’d come back with her own variation on, well, can you start because that would really be helpful, thank you.
All of this is prelude to telling you that I can tell when I’m stressed these days because my lower back aches.
I think this is one of those things that I’ve actually known before I knew it, if that makes sense; I’d noticed over the past couple years that the first day of any given convention will end with me in the hotel room feeling a sudden pain in my lower back that temporarily makes me think, oh fuck, it’s finally happened, I’ve thrown my back out until it subsides and I blame it on walking around all day with my laptop in a bag. (This, for some reason, always seems to happen when I’m standing up after writing for awhile, hunched over the computer, and suddenly realize I’m hungry and should do something about that.) The laptop isn’t to blame; my age isn’t, really, either. It’s that I’m inevitably more stressed than I’d admit at the time.
I’ve come to notice the warning signs, and realize the lower back is one of two places I hold all my stress. (My left shoulder is the other; why the left and not the right? Would that I had an answer.) It’s like realizing that when I feel sad, I can feel it in the back of my neck and as a headache before the emotion makes its way to the bit of my brain that can name things. Or noticing that I feel happiness in the back of my head first. (Nope, I can’t explain that; don’t ask me to.)
Other people’s bodies, according to pop songs, are wonderlands. Much to the doubtless satisfaction of my therapist, I’ve finally realized that mine is just early warning signs.