Vulnerability (Part 1 of ?)

Musings on impermanence, personal and otherwise

Vulnerability

My hand, once plump and smooth with baby dimples.
Seventy years of use: writing, soothing, kneading, scrubbing, digging.
Sunlight and shadows reveal my vulnerability. 
My heart knows it was always there, beneath the surface.
Waiting.

(March 7, 2019)

When 69-year-old Jo wrote that, I was just coming to grips with the mystery of aging. What surprises were lurking in my body? My medical history is ridiculously boring. It takes me no time to fill out the patient intake forms. “No, no, no, n/a, no no no”, etc. Broken bones: 1, my =middle finger, the top joint, broken while catching a pass in a “chick” football game in my 50s. Cataract surgery. Two uncomplicated pregnancies, resulting in two wonderful adults who have much fancier medical histories than I do.

But 2024 fixed that. In July, I had Covid for the second time, and this time it kicked my butt, even with a timely dose of Paxlovid. In August I found a lump in my breast that turned out to be a tiny little bit of cancer (stage 0, to let you know how tiny). I feel fine, just antsy. Diagnosis is only the beginning of the trip, as anyone with interesting medical histories knows. The tests and the waiting are moving me slowly towards a treatment plan.

In December, I tripped over my own big feet while hurrying to my exercise class and pinballed down a flight of concrete steps. I spent three hours in the ER having my picture taken. The verdict: nothing broken, just lots of technicolor bruises. Oh, and the CT scan of the bump on my noggin revealed a nodule on my thyroid. So, the new year began with a thyroid scan and a referral for a fine needle biopsy.

So yeah, I am feeling vulnerable now, on a personal level. Knowing and accepting impermanence are two very different things. We are programmed to respond to existential threats with an urge to either fight back or run away and hide. These stress responses aren’t always helpful. “Fighting” cancer is a great metaphor, but staying calm and rational enough to make informed medical decisions doesn’t necessarily require personifying cancer as a menacing demon. Not for me, anyway. It’s tempting to respond to bad news by trying to escape from it, and I am all for some well-timed distractions. For me, that’s hanging out with friends and watching movies, ideally at the same time. Making music. Reading. Creating.

From where I sit, 2025 feels like “fight or flight” time on every level, from personal to global, and I’m not just talking about my own newly-realized mortality. History teaches us that no empire or nation lasts forever. The world is in turmoil, with enough pestilence, famine, and conflict to trigger anyone’s amygdala. Aren’t we all, for various reasons? Except for the folks who are rooting for the End Times, it seems that everyone around me is feeling vulnerable and anxious.

What do I do with that? Can I apply what I am learning about personal vulnerability and my stress response to larger, more national and global threats? What does “fight or flight” mean in the context of an individual response to climate change or fascist oligarchy? As 2025 rolls out, I hope to find some answers. If I do, I will be sure to share. I am also open to suggestions.

Reminder:

Beginning January 8, 2025, I will be posting new essays, poems, and/or art twice a month.

Looking for my old diaries? Archived daily entries from Spiral Notebook can be found online using the search feature (just type the month and date, ex. January 8) or following the “Weekly Notebook” link in the navigation bar.