The underside of my arm is really really soft. I realized this today while I was driving. I tried to focus all of my senses on how my skin felt against my fingertips. I tried not to feel my fingertips against my inner arm. I do things like this often, try to separate myself from myself. When I did this today my inner arm became really ticklish. I guess because I was focusing too much on not focusing and the nerve endings were standing at attention because they were being paid such close attention to.
When I was younger I used to stare in the mirror at my face until it stopped making sense. I would smile really big and if I kept staring suddenly my face became insanely foreign and I wouldn't recognize myself at all. This was around the age that I would try to sit still and think of nothing. I would close my eyes and tell myself to clear my mind. Then I would begin to argue in my head that if I was telling myself to clear my mind then my mind wasn't clear or focused because I was focused on clearing it, or telling myself to clear it, and then I'd start to get confused and things would feel really unfocused. After awhile I would be able to see the blood vessels in my inner eye lid. They were sort of a neon orangey reddish over a blackish. I guess I used to meditate at age 7, that's what I was doing right? That's the point of meditation...to clear your mind. I still find it just as impossible as I did then, but I appreciate the necessity for such pursuits just the same.
All last week I was convinced I had heart disease because my left shoulder ached. I googled "Left Shoulder Pain" and sent myself spiraling down a well of irrational fear. Suddenly whenever I breathed in my chest was tight or heavy, like an elephant was standing on it gingerly. Over the next few days my shoulder pain had spread across my entire upper back. I was convinced I would die in my sleep and began to have heart palpitations. In the back of my mind I knew how irrational I was being but the pain was real. I went to the library and got a book called
Mind Over Back Pain. I read it during my lunch break and my coworkers made fun of me.
The book said that something like 70 percent of back pain is in our heads. In the 1970's doctors saw an influx of patients with stomach issues, and they began to relate them to stress. Since then, it's become widely known that stress can lead to things like ulcers and sour stomach, and the simple knowledge of this has decreased the frequency of stomach problems. Apparently now we store our tension in our shoulders and back. I'm sure someday it will manifest somewhere else. I'll probably get cancer from worrying. Anyway, ever since I read that book my back pain has been gone.
I think that River Phoenix's brother had the hardest name to spell ever.
