I promise you that I haven’t spent the last month all chatty and never crabby. That would be creepy.
Oh, I have been crabby.
My thyroid has stopped working.
If you don’t want to hear about ailments, don’t fucking get old because it’s going to happen to you whether you want it to or not. Well, maybe your thyroid will be fine, but you’ll have arthritis or shingles or diverticulitis or something. You’d better listen up because you need to learn compassion for your future.
Actually, having a bad thyroid isn’t so bad as long as I can keep my medicines going. Plenty of people have no thyroid at all and are just fine. But mine is still in the process of shutting down and I keep dropping into this zone.
I am a soulless hag.
I assure you that I am.
I’m not sleeping so I have deep circles under my eyes and I’m developing skin tags. No, I don’t think that skin tags come from not sleeping, but suddenly, there they are. At least I don’t have any on my face yet.
I knew this woman who grew a great hairy knob just to the left of her right eyebrow. That thing did everything but grow fingers and wave. I’m telling you that if I had a great hairy knob growing on my face, I’d get plastic surgery to have it removed. I don’t generally want to come into the circle of judgment that going to a plastic surgeon would involve, but I’d see one about a great hairy knob on my face. I can live with wrinkles and sagging skin. I can even live with lumps and fatty deposits in strange places. But I couldn’t live with a great hairy knob wobbling off my face.
About the bags under my eyes—coffee isn’t helping. It just keeps me up at night.
And the soulless part?
Yes. I have lost my soul. I fake it pretty well, but being low thyroid not only makes a body tired, but it also makes a soul depressed.
I’m not sad. I’m just empty. I pretend to care until sometimes I manage to care. Then, I’ll feel okay for a little while and people look at me like I’m strange, being so happy because I sang in church or a kid stopped to say hello. The problem is that it doesn’t stay with me without a lot of help. Basically, I feel no creativity. Do you know what it’s like to be a creative person who is stripped of that feeling? I feel no spirit for anything. I don’t want to write or draw or read. I don’t see the point. Sometimes, I don’t even believe in God when my thyroid is low.
Yes, it’s true: when my thyroid is low, there is little to no chance for me to meet the holy spirit. It sucks. That joy, the awe in seeing the complexity and beauty in the earth is gone. I keep trying and now and then, I feel a little blip. I know it’s there, but I can’t touch it. Or rather, I can’t feel it touch me.
Years ago, my grandpa died of emphysema. I loved my grandpa. But he had smoked his whole life and worked in a coal mine when he was young and in a water treatment plant with chlorine when he was older. His lungs were a mess. Toward the end, he used to say that it was ironic for him to struggle to get air when he was surrounded by so much air.
I feel that way about the holy spirit. I see it in fidgety children that I tutor and in dogs romping at the park. I see it in flowers that bloom, even the ones with thorns. I read it in books, watch it in movies. The world is full of spirit, even if you don’t want to call it the holy spirit. Life exuberantly blossoms, pollinates, dies, and resurrects around me, but I don’t get to be touched by that right now.
I have a newfound compassion for people with depression. I get it. They aren’t sad. They just don’t feel there’s any point.
Thankfully, I get to go to my endocrinologist tomorrow. She’s going to take blood. She’s going to adjust my levels of Synthroid, and suddenly, I’ll feel just fine. It will be as easy as that. I know it’s not that easy for people with depression.
Tomorrow, I get to feel again.
Thank you for listening, jules