vivinolavita

“The trench my worried thoughts have worn towers on either side.  I can see a bar of sky…there is no more room for anything but pacing, wearing down, round & round in my worry trench.”  Hulme, K. The Bone People.

Like so many people, I have a perpetual knot in my back, up under my left shoulder blade.  I can’t quite put my finger on it, literally.  But I know it’s there.  Sometimes it’s all I can feel; sometimes I forget about it.  But it’s there.

Over the years, I’ve developed a chronic, annoying, irritating, at times nearly debilitating, cough.  It interferes with my work, my sleep, my communication, my physical and emotional well-being.  Even if I’m not coughing, I’m expecting to cough.  I’ve learned where the mute button is on my work phone and my cell phone and I’ve learned how to use it.  I carry gum for the opera, the movie, even yoga class.  While everyone else is “omming” away at the beginning of class readying their minds and bodies for an hour of yoga, I’m focused on stifling a cough.  Tears roll down my face, my body jerks, all in an attempt not to disrupt the class but, eventually, the floodgates burst and the cough-sneeze combo comes out louder than ever.

The two are connected of course, as everything is connected.  While the knot and the cough certainly have lives of their own, they work in tandem.  Coughing, or worrying about coughing, anticipating coughing, suppressing my cough, all aggravate the knot that resides deep under my shoulder blade.   Manipulating the knot triggers the cough.  Hmmm.

Just now, in typing these words, everytime I meant to type the word “knot”, I typed “know”.  The “t” and the “w” are not right next to each other on the keyboard.  Which actually confirms the mental connection I’ve alredy made with THE KNOT.  Like the worry trench I often erode myself into, this knot is a worry knot.  Like one bead in a set of worry beads that can be manipulated in many different ways, between thumb and fingers, pushed up and down the string, noisily or silently, incessantly, sporadically, with purpose, as a distraction, while in conversation, while in silent, meditative contemplation, in prayer, passively, aggressively, the one bead is not the point.  But it is a point of concentrated energy.  So is THE KNOT.  A concentration of knotted muscle tissue that, over time, may actually calcify, no doubt already has to some extent.

My worry knot feels like a tightly wound coil made of long tissue threads.  Threads that start out straight and strong and vibrant.  But then contract, bunch, knot, coil, constrict until there is no blood, no oxygen, no vibrancy.

If I were to draw my worry trench, it would not be one straight line on which I pace back and forth from one end to the other.  Another person’s worry trench might be that exactly.  Mine is a spiral that just gets deeper and deeper.  I don’t even need to stop and turn around when I get to the end of the trench.  I just keep pacing round and round, digging the trench deeper and deeper, boring down through the earth, the light above growing dimmer as I worry, until there is no more light.  I could worry myself all the way through the earth and out the other side where I would then be back on top of the earth with all the light I need.

But along the way from one light source to the other, it gets really dark.  Totally dark.  Absolutely dark.  The darkest dark, pitch dark.  And hard to breathe.  As this worry trench spirals deeper and deeper, there comes a point where it’s easier to keep boring downward than to try and climb out.  If I’m deep enough, I can’t possible climb out by myself.  I need a rope to climb out.  A rope tied to a mountain. Or an elephant.  To an oak.  Otherwise, I have to keep worrying it through to the other side.  Or, I can get my own infinite rope, tie it to the mountain that is my rock, and carry my infinite rope with me as I start my worry pacing, round and round, down and down, round and down.  Worry all I need to.  Worry myself to death. Then, when I’ve finished worrying or have forgotten what I was worrying about, I can use my infinite rope to climb out of my worry spiral before it gets too the dark.