“The professional plays with pain.” This has been one of my mantras during the last year from Stephen Pressfield. Pain refers to many things for me: physical pain like a sprained ankle or a volleyball shoulder, emotional pain of grieving a family in another continent and the loss of the most important relationship in my life, distractions from my interests, and just about anything else that isn’t getting the job done.
When it comes to internal pain like nausea, headaches, and digestion issues I’m especially susceptible. I suppose I should tell this story because if I don’t tell it, my family will continue to tell it, and dare I say untruthfully, because the details keep getting more and more exaggerated.
My version: I used to rock in the backseat of the car. Yes, rock. Rock like I was in a rocking chair. It does seem a little bit odd to think about. Blond hair and blue eyed Jared rocking at the hips in a stationary seat in the back seat of the 75 Cutlass Supreme. I don’t know why I did it but I did. It’s hard to divine a child’s purposes even when you are the child 26 years later.
Well, as most good parents would do, they informed me that this behavior would be perceived as culturally inappropriate. I’m sure they had some way of putting it to me that I could understand. Perhaps a, “Jared, that’s weird,” or “Knock that off,” or “I’ll get you some ice cream if you stop,” or “You can stay up and watch He Man or Rawhide if you stop,” and so on. Well I did stop.
Shortly after this I developed carsickness. I don’t know really if the two are linked but they are my first memories in the back seat of a car, and back then we didn’t have car seats, badass kids rule. Two notable sicknesses stand out. The first was while we are driving somewhere on holiday and Duchess, our distinguished, miniature female sheltie, like Lassie but smaller, was between my legs. I can’t go into the details of the dog’s facial expression, the sound I made while expelling my stomach fluids, or the resulting aftermath, because frankly, I was sick and try to block those memories out. I puked on the dog. My goddaughter and niece loves this story and if you want the best version speak to my brother Trevor after you’ve supplicated him with a couple of microbrews.
The second: I was heading with some chaps to the Carousel Mall. I was in the backseat of the mother’s Volvo and we were pulling into the parking lot area. I informed the crew that I was not feeling well and was unsure if I would remain intact for the rest of the drive. My sense of boyhood honor was clearly going to be offended if my stomach made an offense. It was either a lose face or lose stomach moment. I was doing everything in my power to resist the revolting upheaval of all things digested. I kept thinking that we were literally about to pull into a parking space. I could see the spaces. I could see the mall. It was only a minute away. It was a minute too late. My friends laughed it off and made fun of me until it got old and we had other business at hand in the mall. I will forever be grateful to my friend’s mother who dutifully had a roll of paper towels in the back seat and took care of the spillage without complaint. To her I owe so much and only hope that my services to her family later in life have repaid the debt, which at this examination, I think they have. A story for another day perhaps.
The motion sickness has generally subsided into adulthood and beyond. I find I have it most when not driving and in the backseat. I have developed a bad case of it here in Australia to which I’m curious to the origin. I have several theories:
1. 1. Southern Hemisphere gravity.
2. 2. I took a shit load of cold medicine while traveling to Australia, which may or may not have killed all the useful bacteria in my digestive system. A system that is struggling with readjusting itself to a period of time where certain necessary functions are taking place 14 hours in the future.
3. 3. I’m being a pansy.
4. 4 .I’m eating crazy foods such as Kangaroo, Olives, copious amounts of Aussie Shiraz, rich Espresso, Weet Bix, Balmain Bug (like little lobsters), fish, Aussie milk, Aussie Subway, that don’t agree with my American stomach.
I’m reserving judgment on all of these theories. Tonight’s action steps were to:
1. 1. Run 8K. I haven’t indulged in any endorphins since arriving
2. 2. Took a bath.
3. 3.Ate a ‘clean’ food meal of fish, rice, small glass of wine, water, vegetables, Greek yogurt, and ultra vita-man
4. 4. Go to bed at 9-10pm instead of 7-8pm
5. 5. And write this analysis to doctorize myself. I usually result to this sort of construct when it comes to my ill health. See Jared’s 3 page cough history when I was trying to figure out how the wood stove was making me ill.
Conclusions, going abroad is this real sexy and exotic dream that I had. I’d been to London 10 years ago, and I hear from my mother that the adult body changes every 10 years, it was no big deal when I was 20 to change time zones! Well, I don’t feel sexy and exotic when my stomach is in a Bavarian pretzel knot half of the day and I am about to embark on a 10-day bus tour. I have a new found respect for my parents making this round trip 10 times for my mother in 4 ish years and probably 20-30 times for my father.
My parents have gone into parental mode, which I won’t fight, I appreciate that I can be parented even at 30. I have travel bands for my wrists, ginger travel aide, pharmaceutical travel aide, and a spray anti nausea medicine all thanks to the planning and shopping efforts of my parents today at the discount chemist. I’m wearing the bands and planning on using the ginger because I made a speech at dinner to the effect of, “My body runs fine without medicine! I need to self correct with sleep, endorphins, good nutrition, and natural remedy.” I probably sounded whiny and impish, oh well.
The professional does play with pain and I will continue. I just want to gripe about it in a literary fashion for a few pages and act like my internal health matters to the thoughts of the world. Surprisingly, I feel better already after writing this. Maybe I just had to vomit some words for a few minutes to prevent the other type.
