I wanted to post my second day of the Blackmare trip today, but I didn’t get it written before I left for the coast. That means I have to write it up after, and I just don’t have the brain to be doing that at the moment. I’m working on it, for sure, but the work is slower than normal.
8 years ago, after the first coast trip, I started getting the abdominal pains that led to the diagnosis of Irritable Bowel Syndrome. IBS is kind of a BS diagnosis to me, because it’s a differential diagnosis. That means, they’re pretty sure that whatever IBS is, I surely have it, since I don’t have anything else they know how to diagnose. Now, feeling similar kinds of abdominal pains after the most recent coast trip, I’m wondering if it has more to my body adapting to a moist environment and then having to readapt to a dry one.
I don’t remember if I had additional tummy issues after the last coast trip, the one in 2018, or not. At that point, I was still trying a lot of different things to manage the IBS, so I might not have noticed any extra issues at that time. Or maybe it wasn’t as damp that year. This year’s coast trip didn’t get a lot of rain, but we spent almost every day in a cloud for at least part of the day. Very moist.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how I have been called sensitive all my life as if it were an insult. Upset because of something someone said? Stop being so sensitive! And for a long time I thought that meant that the way that I felt was wrong. My reactions to life? Wrong. But maybe there’s something to be said for sensitivity. If my mind is sensitive, might my body not also be sensitive? If my body is sensitive, does that not mean it is a refined tool of perception?
And if a sensitive body could be called perceptive, then why not call my sensitive mind perceptive? As if for most folks emotions were the hours on a clockface, and mine go into minutes. They would only have 12 answers for what time it is, using only the hour hand, while I have over 700. More sensitive. They’d be confused when I told them the time was 3:29, because to them it’s just 3. They might get angry when I kept arguing with them that the time was 4:55, not 4 – closer to 5, in fact!
If sensitivity can be an asset, then it’s up to me to make it that way. To sell it that way. The burden of proof of my own worth is ever only on me.
I was going to start working out as soon as I got back from the coast, but I really pushed myself on that trip. I need more time to recover before I start stressing my body again. Especially because I’ve got another hike in a couple weeks. My Idaho Centennial Trail hike for the year. After the coast trip, I don’t think this one will be so hard. I know there’s going to be rough trail, and no trail, but I’m confident that I can get by those sections, and that I’ve got a good calendar for the route.