I just found out Owen Wilson is in the hospital after attempting suicide this past weekend [1]. It's not only weird since he's the last person I would expect to do something like this, but because I spent the weekend thinking of suicide.
[1]
The pain that has encumbered my body in the past 3 weeks has left me with a new insight as to why people kill themselves "to stop the pain". Such a cliché, no? "Stop the pain". Yet, this past week the pain has been so brutal that I found myself breaking down and sobbing for hours the other day.
It's hard enough to deal with the fact that once I past 40, I am official "old". It is harder to contend with the possibility of spending my old age inside an achy, ill and broken down old body.
So I thought a lot about Kurt Cobain. Not that I would ever pull a Kurt Cobain [2]. Yet I hear that Kurt suffered from Chron's disease. That disease is supposed to be so horrible and debilitating that it was not a shock to a lot people to know Kurt had pulled the trigger. And all weekend, I spent thinking that if Kurt's pain was worst than what I am experiencing now, then I can completely understand why he did it.
I mean, did you know that if you are depressed you can actually be overcome by pain in your joints and muscles? It's not just the fatigue that comes from being depressed. The stress, the lack of sleep, the erratic eating, they all can make your immune system get out of whack and have your body shut down through pain. So imagine the pain of being depressed piling on the pain of your illness. No wonder people think of taking the shortcut out of life.
I have a sneaking suspicion it's fybromyalgia. Given the medical history in my family, it could be ostheosporosis and even arthritis. At my age, that would so totally suck. So when I started doing research I found out that my pain could indeed be a little bit of everything : stress, lack of sleep, extra weight, IBS, food allergies, genetics ... old age.
I will see my chiropractor and my family doctor next week. I am already getting treatment from my Chinese Herbologist and accupuncturist. Yet hopefully it's after next week and the battery of tests I am requesting from them that I will know what's afflicting me.
In the meantime I am doing a lot of gentle yoga, a lot of breathing excersices and sleep.
I am trying to get myself to sleep at least 6-7 hours and to take breaks and rest during the day. I am pulling away from the computer. And it's affecting my writing. I've still been working during the day. It's at night though, when I get my writing muse on. Going to sleep cuts into my writing big time --yet my body wants to heal.
I even have a movie from NetFlix waiting for me to kick back and relax : Zoolander [3]. It's with Ben Stiller and ... Owen Wilson.
When I was thinking of Kurt Cobain this weekend, Owen totally popped into my mind. I thought, well there's the antithesis of Cobain, a totally happy guy.
Owen slit his wrists [4] --or so the gossip goes.
Puts my pain in complete perspective.
[5] | 
[6] | 
[7] | 
[8] | 
[9] | 
[10]