There's a spot on the sides of my rib cage, where muscles join, that when shit is going down in the outside world, it cramps up and when people touch it, I cry.
I learned a long time ago it REALLY hurts when these muscles are all bound up.
But I still cry every time it needs to be untangled.
These spots on my sides are like a barometer for how well I am actually handling the stress in my life.
The person giving me a massage touched it today, and I cried.
It's not so much a pain cry - it does hurt like a sod of thing when pressure is put on it - but it's like an emotional release button being pushed and I cry.
Mostly I cry because it hurts SO MUCH and it lends me to believe massage therapists must have a touch of sadist in them.
Every time the massage person jabs at it they say: yeah, sorry, these hurt... while continuing to lean in to it.
From that very first week I have had regular massages to try and keep blood flowing through my body - mostly to my brain.
I nabbed a massage the Tuesday after Pete had died mostly due to a cracking migraine and fear of lack of blood flow through my neck and the poor massage person could barely extract my shoulders from my ears there was so much tension there.
She wasn't entirely sure how the blood was getting to my brain either the way everything was (understandably) jammed up.
Over the course of a few months we worked out the sore spots and where I clearly held my anxiousness or hurt or anger and ever so patiently worked it out of me.
Something would go awry and my massage person could almost tell what it was by the set of muscles that got bound up by it.
It got so obvious we started renaming them by the triggers that bound them up.
This spot, down the side of my ribs hurts like nothing else and it only happens when stuff is getting too hard to handle.
Back then they hurt all the time.
But then they stopped hurting as much.
I remember when I thought I was handling things well (but clearly wasn't) and the massage person began to work out these bunch of muscles how much it hurt. Physically and emotionally.
Then about a year later they had to dig them out again, and it rushed me right back to those early days of grief and how much everything hurt. And the hurt I was feeling then was exactly what I was feeling now.
Then the next time, same thing. This absolutely excruciating pain of this one muscle being worked on that spirals me right back to the pain of those early weeks and months.
The massage person digs at those muscles and it's like they've turned on a tap. Instant tears.
I remember those times crying at the massage therapist: oh my god, it still hurts as much. How can it still hurt so much? Why does it still hurt so much?
Today, the same thing happened so unexpectedly.
I mean, it's been a fortnight. There's been lots of trauma triggers and emotional highs and lows and frustrations and personal wins and highs and ... it's just been a LOT.
So today I had a massage and the massage therapist worked on those muscles and boom - tears.
It hurts like hell the jamming pressure on that spot, but the tears weren't from the pain, as such.
They were tears because right then, I might as well have been back at the beginning.
That pain felt like failure, if I'm honest.
It felt like: I've come so far, and yet one bad fortnight and it STILL hurts now like it did back then.
It just hurtles me back and I think: I have done so much and overcome so many hurdles and achieved so many things and yet ... it still hurts this much AGAIN!
I can do all these things ... and yet it STILL hurts.
It's like this one bunch of muscles, no matter how much I do and how far I go, remind me that in the great but scheme of things, it doesn't matter how much I think I have control over my body or things or thoughts, it will bring me sailing back to the reality of: no you don't - you're hurting and it hurts and it's hard and you need to stop.
Because the other thing about having those really really painful bits poked at, is they hurt for days afterwards. Irrespective of how much water I drink.
They force me to stop.
And that generally means I cry again.
Because it also forces me to think about WHY those muscles are bunched up and hurting so much.
Nothing like a bit of self reflection with some bruised ribs to really face up to what I should have done days ago to avoid this in the first place.
To be fair, while I do bring a bit of it on myself, a lot of what we've had lately is circumstantial or unexpected and it's knocked me sideways (wait... maybe that's why my ribs hurt 🤔)
And I'm tired. So. Tired.
The blood pressure medication I was on had a side effect of 'persistent dry cough' ... and persistent it was! Day and night. It woke me up in the night. A lot.
At one point last week while I was coughing up a lung at 1.35am, 2.46am, 4.13am and 5.26am I did think it was a good thing there was no one else in the bed with me - they wouldn't be getting any sleep either!
And interrupted sleep for 4 weeks has taken its toll. As, apparently, has the coughing on the muscles around my rib cage.
(I've changed drugs and that should help.)
But in exciting news for those following along at home, my blood pressure is now not at sky scraper levels - I recorded a 123/82 at the Drs this week all while telling her about the week that was: a child almost fainting at blood tests, finding autopsy reports, having a phone call suggesting I'm neglecting the needs of a child, getting through dinner dance and running around a netball court in the rain umpiring an Under 11s match.
So in the midst of the crazy, and sad, and hurting and everything of the last 2 weeks - my blood pressure has actually come down.
So now I just have to handle the emotional hangover that inevitably comes with an episode like this.
The sore tired eyes from crying. The pain from my massaged muscles. The weight of the reality check. The tiredness from acknowledging the weight and its impact and the trying to let it go.
For starters it looks like a glass of water because my massage people are nothing if not consistent in their reminder that now all the sore muscles have been unknotted, I need lots and lots of water to flush the system out, lest I be even sorer.
But it definitely won't be as sore as the spot on my sides before they touched it...
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