'FUCK: A Health Monologue'Holding a physical form requires constant, unrelenting maintenance. I was keeping a record of how many glasses of water I was drinking a day, and the most I could manage was five. I don’t have time, and I’m always pissing. Every half hour I’ve got to stop what I’m doing and go to the bathroom or sit in discomfort at work or on a bus, or waking up at 5am with an aching bladder. It’s much easier not to drink, it’s much easier to always be on the brink of dehydration. And food, food is just as much of a joke; buying food, cooking food, choosing food, using it before it wastes, and masticating and pushing pulp to the back of my throat is so repulsive, and having all these invisible processes inside and not knowing which ones are going right... I don’t know, you give your body all this stuff and it doesn’t know what to do with it and throws it away or turns it into cancer.This isn’t just a case of saying, okay, “I’m sick.” This has always been my worst fear, that’s what I’m facing. I’m up against something that someone else gave me with a terrifying expiration date: use it before it wastes. My body has conspired to kill me ten, fifteen years early. It’s just... why am I being wrecked from the inside, why the fuck! People get sick, I know this! But what am I gonna do? It’s just been getting worse and worse for months, the shaking, I can’t control my hands. I’ll get dizzy again and, probably I need to eat but I’m scared to, it just makes me feel nauseous, it’ll give me cramps in an hour. Maybe nothing’s moving in there. Maybe I’ve gone still.I know my nerves are eating themselves. The first doctor I saw could see how upset I was, I said, “it comes and goes” and she said “what do you think it is?” because I wouldn’t stop crying. I didn’t tell her that every time my arm tingles and I get weak I work myself into a panic because I can think of nothing else but I’m having a stroke and I won’t be able to use my phone or speak to call an ambulance. I can’t say, “I know what’s going to happen, I’m going to die on my bathroom floor and I don’t know when anyone will find me.” I say to the doctor, between quick breaths, “I don’t know, I just feel terrible.” She says it sounds like I’m thinking about it too much. Does that make you sick? Thinking about it too much? Remembering all the tubes inside that can clot or twist at any moment. Living inside my own body, and knowing it, what a fucking nightmare. This is the worst way to exist.Anyway she says, come back if it gets worse. They always say that. They always say that when I get ‘hysterical.’ Of course I’m concerned about my health, what else do I have? If this body has a big time fuck up then where will I go? Catch it early. Sending me away as if this is normal and I’ll calm down on my own, stop having panic attacks when it feels like the skin on my face is full of moths. I hope it’s serious just to spite you.I went back and the other doctor said, “it could be a vitamin D deficiency, or the early signs of MS.” Why is everything in my life zero or a-fucking-hundred? That one was on my list, next to diabetes, my brain tumour, the bowel cancer, below IBS, endometriosis, some kind of rare blood virus after finding those wide-set bite marks on my inner elbow. That patch of meat over my right shoulder blade that went numb about six months ago. Couple of weeks ago I thought, I’m gonna die of compact faeces, like a neglected rabbit, like Elvis Presley, I’m gonna die.The shaking has been really bad today, in my fingers and my wrists and legs. I try to clutch a pen and my muscles can’t even keep steady. I can’t stop thinking. There are thick, candycane-striped bundles of nerves in our shoulders and in ten years the slimy coatings on mine will have quivered and disintegrated... Happy Holidays.