My phone shakes in my shaky hand. My other hand clenches into a fist and releases, clenches and releases. Reaching out to my doctor is not the same as jumping out of an airplane, but I tried telling my brain that already and my hands still shake, shake, shake. Twenty minutes ago, my whole body was shaking, but I negotiated that down to just my hands by telling my brain, or the toddler that hijacks my brain at the drop of a hat, that my doctor did say I could text her anytime. 

My hands still shake because that’s not exactly what she said, though. One visit, she said, “I’m just a text away,” and didn’t explicitly forbid me from texting on a Friday, a day she always takes off. Another visit soon after that—I have to see her a lot because I really, really want to switch out my brain (or the toddler that hijacks it at the drop of a hat)—she said, “I respond better to more communication rather than less. Also, that number you text on”—because I have managed to send texts to her during other flares—“you can actually call it, you know.” I laughed because it was a joke. Not that she knew I would never actually call. 

She’s just a text away I broadcast throughout my brain. This humongous risk is actually safe. It’s not even really a risk, but I tried telling that to my brain already, and my hands still shake, shake, shake. So that left me with the option of looking for parachutes. Or getting through this rapidly worsening flare on my own. I’d already slammed enough elderberry syrup to sugarcoat a breakup. Taken vitamin C up to bowel tolerance. Heated and reheated my water bottle for the most stabby pains. I’d been told by a squadron of health professionals that these flares were psychosomatic—my brain probably was telling me to GTFO of my body because it was not safe, was not safe, was not safe, and my doc and I just hadn’t figured out why yet—so all of this was placebo at this point. But placebo doesn’t mean fake.

This doctor probably thinks the flares are all in my head, too. Not that that’s the same as psychosomatic. I don’t think I’m making them up—at least when I’m in control of HQ. But the toddler can’t hear anything except Mom saying don’t cause a scene don’t cause a scene don’t cause a scene, so the toddler’s stuck on paranoid. To be fair, even I’m still confused about what a “scene” actually is. 

Certainly not texting my doctor, who said it was okay to text anytime even though she later said it was better to call but either way never said there were certain things I needed to handle on my own that would be Mom to me starting when I was three apparently.

I run up the flight of stairs from the entryway of my house to the second floor. Then I run back down them. One thing my doctor has said is when flight gets triggered, act like you actually are being chased by a tiger. Give your body some way to use all that prep work for survival sprinting even if tigers haven’t ever lived in your land. Even if there is no actual risk in sending a text message, especially to someone who’s said they’re only a text away. And who is in a caring profession.

Except if they didn’t mean what they said.

Damn it. I’d worked through she will be angry faster this time 

  people can sound angry over text if their response is shorter than my original message 

  I always think people are mad at me 

she did say she was just a text away 

I’d worked through you’re bothering/annoying her more successfully than I ever had, too. She’s a doctor! If helping people annoyed her, she picked the wrong profession and that’s not actually my problem or responsibility to deal with was the clincher this time. 

I’d plowed right through what if she can’t help me so fast this round. Then she will say she doesn’t know and help me find resources. That’s the one that’s actually happened once before, so it was easier to believe.  I was finally just about to tap send. I’d finally gotten the draft to my doc just right:

Good morning, Dr. S—as you know, I don’t make a habit of bothering people on their day off (which is why I’ve pushed through many flares on my own) and I’m really sorry that this doesn’t appear to be one of them (which I’m not at all blaming you for, so don’t feel bad for not having figured this out yet). It’s totally okay if you don’t know (though this is a flare, which you’ve been able to help me with before when I’ve been able to get into your office), but I’m having that ‘vacate the body’ thing again—I haven’t yet identified the trigger (which is one thing you’ve been super helpful with in the past) and I’m not getting it to calm down after trying all the usual things. Do you have suggestions?

What was the likelihood that Dr. S didn’t mean what she said about texting? Or, for that matter, any of the other nice things she’s said to me in our short time together? Come to think of it, she never checked in after the last flare to see how I was doing. She just sent me home with an armful of supplements, a printout of boilerplate breath practices, and a vague veneer of shame that I’d painted over with profuse gratitude for her emergency help yet again. She just feels sorry for me because the other doctors haven’t been able to help me and got sick of me and it’s only a matter of time before that happens again. 

And it will keep happening and I’ll run out of doctors in the world and I’ll have to live randomly wanting to vacate my own body until the day I actually do.

My spine straightens so hard I’m pretty sure it’s going to buck my head right off it. Nothing I try to negotiate with the toddler smashing all the buttons on the controls in HQ works until this: look, I obviously need help. Dr. S either knows how to help or knows how to get me help. 

And, of course, I have to cut down the message. This is what I finally send to Dr. S:

Good afternoon, Dr. S—I’m so sorry to bug you on your day off. I’ve been struggling with a flare for several hours and am just not licking it on my own after trying my usual supplementation regimen and heat treatment. Would you have other suggestions for me to try?

The flare relaxes a bit just by sending out the SOS. Relief is on the way.

I repeat this to myself for an hour, striving not to check my phone every 4.5 seconds even though it’s on chime, so I’ll hear any notification the nanosecond it arrives. I reference that breathing exercise sheet—I’d tacked it to my bulletin board right in front of my desk, where I usually am, doomscrolling and avoiding work. The breathing stuff helps lengthen the time between checking my notifications to see if she still likes me to 10.8 seconds. 

Another hour passes. I should probably try to get stuff done. Maybe my monster to-do list is the trigger for this flare. Usually, the trigger is some embarrassing I-would-definitely-have-this-under-control-if-I-were-a-real-adult-so-no-wonder-no-one-likes-me thing like that. But my whole body is shaking again. Maybe I’ll do just the easy stuff today. Put the Goodwill piles into bags that can actually be transported. Load them into the car. Assemble the kneeling chair that came a month ago. Change the cat’s litter. Added bonus of all these is the physical activity that will help my body process all its tiger junk. Two birds with one stone!

I two-birds-one-stone-d it through every second of the next hour. And the next one. All the ones right up until dinner time. No way I could eat anything, so I had a good, cathartic cry instead. 

Until inner toddler hits the replay-the-most-recent-unresolved-thing button in HQ. This never fails to trigger a storm of fire ants throughout my whole body, the Googling of whether it’s possible to rescind a text message sent a quarter of a day ago, the drafting of other messages including profuse apologies and thinly veiled attempts to salvage the relationship with undertones of I’ll do whatever it takes so I don’t die alone under a bridge, Mom, my head refusing to register that it's still attached to my body or affiliated with me in any way. 

The elderberry syrup starts to churn. Maybe Dr. S was sugarcoating a breakup.

Maybe she turns off her phone on her days off.

But she’s only a text away.

The bowels rumble—and it doesn’t help to dissociate from them. It also doesn’t help to tell my brain that it’s just too much vitamin C. Either way, I don’t make it to the bathroom in time.

Probably the worst part, though, is attempting to go to bed after washing the shit you shit all over yourself like a little kid and kicking yourself, no matter which way you toss or turn, for not considering the risk that the result or lack of result of reaching out could provoke a worse flare than the one that provoked you to reach out.

It’s not worth it

I sob into my pillow with the tiny amount of air my lungs were giving lip service to

Yes, little one

who Dr. S probably thinks I can control with just my own thoughts 

or some shit.

I guess when it comes to doctors, you’re right.

Megan Wildhood is a writer, editor and writing coach who helps her readers feel seen in her monthly newsletter, poetry chapbook Long Division (Finishing Line Press, 2017), her full-length poetry collection Bowed As If Laden With Snow (Cornerstone Press, May 2023) as well as Mad in America, The Sun and elsewhere. You can learn more about her writing, working with her and her mental-health and research newsletter at meganwildhood.com.

Visual Art
Oladosu Michael Emerald (he/him) is an art editor at Surging Tide magazine, a poet, a writer, a digital/musical/visual artist, a photographer, a footballer, a boxer, and a political scientist. He teaches art at the Arnheim Art Gallery to kids and adults. He is also one of the pioneer residents of the Muktar Aliyu Art Residency. His works have been published or forthcoming in many magazines and won numerous awards in writing and art; a few to mention: Better Than Starbucks, Flash Frog, Icefloe Press, Undivided magazine, Feral, Lyra, Afrocritik, Providus bank anthology alongside Professor Wole Soyinka, won the Off the Limit Art contest, shortlisted in the Arting Arena Poetry Chapbook Contest, Oriire, Necro magazine, Ev0ke, shortlisted in Paradise Gate poetry contest (top ten), finalist in AprilCentaur essay competition, Kalahari Review, Con-scio, Madness Muse Press, Fraidy Cat Lit, Eco Punk, Cultural Daily, Spill Word Web, Paper Lantern Lit, the maul magazine, Zoetic, Pinch Journal, penumbric, Motheaten magazine, Native skin, Nymph, Naija Reader's Buffet, Terror House Magazine, Spring word web, Third Estate Art magazine, thehearth magazine, kalonipa, and elsewhere. He's a man who does not know how to give up, and art chose him before he existed. Say hi to him on Twitter @garricologist and Instagram @garrycologist


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