Don't ignore the signal flairs
Between hope and dread, catharsis and oppression. We're heading into what feels like the longest week of the year.
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The markers of stress tend to manifest on three fingers in my right hand. Ever since I was a late teen, the intense itching from my psoriasis rises and falls like a barometer of the current news, my problems, and internal struggles both real and imagined.
If you know how maddening itchiness can be, then you can understand how good it feels, momentarily, to give in to that temptation to scratch. The paradox lies in how much relief you feel by doing the very act that is destructive to its healing. I’m an accomplice to the overproduction of cells that refuse to mature on my fingers, but instead flake off to expose the rawness underneath.
Less than a week till the election and it’s never been more clear that as a nation we’re living in two different realities. The proof was there last weekend, right here in the city I live in, in an arena that I’ve been to many times. Needless to say, my fingers are burning right now. Add to that, another chronic manifestation of stress that has surfaced again this week. I watch Michelle Obama’s impassioned plea not to ignore what’s at stake—not only for reproductive rights, but for women’s health in general, as I chug down my sixth glass of unsweetened cranberry juice.
It’s amazing how our bodies send up signal flairs in the air. It’s amazing how often we ignore them.