Love Is Like a Goiter.
It grows and grows; Deficient and anxious. But you can't get rid of it. It has attached itself to the side of your neck; to your hormones. Everything governed by erratic periods and bowel movements. You get skinnier then fatter then skinnier again. Rapid heartbeat & increased sweating irritability and trouble sleeping. Phone sex helps. Sometimes hiding. But, then we're dragged out of the house by friends, and we go to the bar. He'd attach himself to my navel; maybe I'd have him on a collar. Regardless, He'd get jealous of all the people looking at me. And I'd get mad and reverse it: say it was because he was drunk. I'd yell, and say, "They're looking at you, asshole!" But we were both drunk. I'd deny it and say I was just dizzy, and blame it all on my thyroid. I can do that now that I have something to blame everything on. But the truth is it doesn't take much booze to fuck me up these days. And he has to take his medicine, so it affects him too; Sometimes good, sometimes bad. I started to realize the real trouble was being caused on a psychic level. Suppression. Subconscious suppression. And oppression: Years of oppression. He was never allowed to speak his mind; Like the rest of us. Nobody is. They all just want to hold you by the neck & not let you speak. And it makes you fear death. You begin to fear everything. With, or without it. It doesn't matter anymore. And I'd try to say it was my glands that were affecting my behavior so much. But he wouldn't believe me. He said it was all me. That I'd changed. And I believed him. And then I lost the ability to speak coherently. All was irrational, because my mind was hyper and it forced itself into my throat prematurely. And then it started growing. Words were building in me; Working now on a cellular level & growing in me with no place to go. And then the anger at being less than great swelled; breading dis- ease. Then the hyper- tension surmounts. The iodine deficiency causes the brain to make fewer connections but fire more rapidly. Nothing is rational. I am nervous, I have difficulty sleeping, moist palms; my hormones are raging. The word hormone stems from the root word- "hormao" which means "I set in motion"; "I stir up"; Operative word being "I" Not "We". Always "I". My deficiencies; My inhibitions; My self-doubt; My bad memory; My metabolism; My fertility; My appetite; My cholesterol; My communication skills with myself; my lack of communication with myself. "I" will destroy "me"; my own body will destroy me if I keep this up. So I dropped him. Tried to loose him. Tried to hurt him. Tried to cut him off. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't hurt myself. So I kept him hanging around. But I knew that there was something wrong that something had to change. So I did whatever I could. I asked not "what the goiter can do for me" But "what can I do for the goiter" I tried everything: I wore necklaces of amber beads; I wrapped myself in tinfoil; I wore silky scarves; I rubbed myself with eggs; and garlic; And with the belly of a frog; and with the hand of a corpse; But all these things were wives tales. Folklore. The placebos did nothing. So I told him that I would be healed by the power of God. And he laughed. And then I reminded him that he was just a goiter. He said that medicine would be my only cure. So I started with the pills: Hormone therapy pills; radioactive iodine treatment; Fish oil; Amino acids; Zoloft. But the irritability never went away. I started having bad dreams about mental hospitals where people were dying of flesh- eating diseases. They were dying of leprosy and were disintegrating; rotting before they died. He'd say, "Let's not think about all the bad things and just fuck." So I just stopped thinking. I stopped all thoughts altogether. I washed it all away. I stopped listening too. Stopped hearing. Mostly to block the criticism. I just stopped letting it all in. And the words stopped working their way into me on that cellular level. And I began to realize that it was my self-esteem that was responsible for my dis-ease. And I began to breathe. And began to heal my goiter. And I filled my goiter with healthy cellular energy and began disintegrating its nodules; shrinking the disease.