Marz Corbeau

I’ve been very ill this week. On Wednesday, I got struck by horrible cramps, spent several hours on and off the toilet, and started an quite a heavy period which made me feel weak. Because PCOS can cause histamine issues, I’ve had hives, a slightly swollen throat, and continued GI issues that have put me off eating. I considered not writing this week - and I don’t think anyone would blame me - but through it all I also feel quite inspired to reflect upon what I’ve learned about dealing with pain and uncertainty.

When I started getting sick last year, I quickly found that distraction was not sufficient. Distraction had been enough to make colds, some fibro flares, and the occasional GI upset more bearable in the past but it so clearly made greater pain than that much worse. It demanded my attention and it would not take no for an answer.

This, frankly, is a terrifying experience. Specifically within the context of a great pain that is unlikely to kill you but will almost certainly visit again and again in life altering ways, the anxiety of facing it is unlike almost any other fear I’ve experienced in my life. There’s no escape yet you have to move. You can’t rush forward yet you can’t stay still. This - oddly enough - is how the Buddha described how he reached enlightenment.

The first Noble Truth that all of life involves suffering can feel vague and immaterial when life is going well, but when I’m in pain, it is immediate and inarguable. While I would never in my life go looking for this pain, it’s ability to sharpen my knowledge and understanding of suffering is unparalleled. The cycle of chronic pain is a near perfect encapsulation of the more mundane parts of samsara - the cycle of suffering and rebirth. When I’m in pain, I’m afraid of what’s happening to me and want to be rid of it. When I’m not in pain, I’m afraid of when I’ll be in pain next and cling to what I can’t do when I’m ill. Neither state ever lasts and while that brings me hope when I’m ill, it crushes me when I’m well. I’ve yet to experience a part of my life that isn’t touched either by the suffering of pain or the suffering of the inevitability of future pain.

The second Noble Truth is that suffering is rooted in attachment (implying both aversion and delusion to a degree as well) and illness has taught me that in a very embodied way. It is the habit of most people, myself included to reach for comfort when experiencing pain but after some of my painful episodes over the last roughly two years, things that used to really compel me - hobbies, entertainment, ideas, identities - started to lose their appeal. It was hard not to look at them and think of how they wouldn’t make me feel better when I was really ill, how I couldn’t plan around them because illness could prevent me from finishing projects, how I couldn’t find meaning in them because their presumed worth seemed to exist in a different context than the one I do when I am in pain. Or more concisely, being attached to things that wouldn’t ease my pain felt like a heavy burden, one I wanted to be rid of.

I spent a lot of time having to carry that attachment around anyways. What I’ve realized is seeing that it’s ultimately futile isn’t enough to get the confidence to chuck it all away. There is, after all, some measure of comfort in the habitual. The third Noble Truth is that there’s a way out of attachment. While I’ve been through enough to have total faith in the Buddha, I’ve had less direct experience of this myself. Not none.

Last June, when I had a particularly bad episode and wound up in the ER at one point, I spent a lot of time listening to dharma talks and trying to meditate as I recovered. Meditation is in some ways easier while in pain because you have a meditation object that demands your whole attention but it is also more difficult because you have a meditation object that demands your whole attention. After hours of lying there, I eventually got to a point in meditation where my body disappeared - I couldn’t feel it at all and this beautiful peace and contentment naturally arose. It was pure bliss and wasn’t dependent on any material thing. I dwelt in it for as long as I was able, about an an hour. When I got back to my body, it was still in pain but the relationship with it felt altered. I could cope.

I didn’t realize how important that experience had been until a week or so later. I was in conflict with my family, who I lived with at the time, over noise and agreements that had been made being broken. I felt so impossibly weak, I thought I might collapse. It felt intolerable to be told that I just needed to cope, that my illness didn’t merit deference, that lying to me had been fine. There was this moment when I felt an anger creep in, quickly followed by a hollow sort of hopelessness that felt like it might swallow me up completely. I’ve never felt understood by my family and it felt like I never would be. But then a peace came over me, a shred of that bliss I’d experienced while meditating came up in my mind. “That’s okay, my happiness isn’t dependent on them anyways.”

While this firm conviction has faded at points, the memory of how it arose never has. I’ve meditated far more in the past year than the past several combined. I’ve gotten quite attached to meditation and the ease it brings me, both in pain and without. The Buddha, when asked about this, said that there only four results to be had from attachment to meditation: the first stage of enlightenment, the second, the third, and the fourth. Given that it actually can bring me relief from more consistent pain and the realizations I’ve had have helped the more sharp pains feel less invasive - I have total confidence that attachment to meditation more fruitful. Letting go of old attachments bit by bit feels joyful knowing I’ve found safety in something else for the time being.

Meditation is just one spoke on the Eightfold Path. The fourth and final Noble Truth is that the Eightfold Path leads to liberation from samsara, a way out of suffering and rebirth completely. There is something about what I’ve experienced in meditation that makes the Eightfold Path feel very practical. It’s difficult to put into words, likely because I’m still in the early stages of whatever realizations underpin that, but it’s made following it seem more natural than it did before this illness came on in earnest. I’ve had several moments where even in the throws of difficult pain, my view shifted and I found myself in a deep sense of gratitude that made the pain infinitely easier to bear. I’ve seen how taking the time to say kind words when in pain brings a physical sense of ease to my body. I’ve felt how remaining mindful of my pain is key to understanding it, which also changes and often lessens it.

This is all to say that while I’ve been in pain a lot this week and sometimes the fear of future pain threatens to swallow me up, I am also immeasurably grateful to my pain for deepening my understanding of the Four Noble Truths and for giving me the physical feedback to find the reliable way out of suffering as a whole. I am not convinced I would have explored this with as much devotion if my body weren’t on the line in the way that it is. My body is a demanding and urgent teacher. While I’m not always a willing student, what I’ve learned has changed my life.

I’m going to skip the general updates this week. Instead I’ll leave you with the invitation to chat about this (as I’m able) via email at marzcorbeau@proton.me and this link to a list of dharma talks on illness I return to frequently for comfort. May they bring you ease as well.

All the best, friends. Wishing you all well.

For chronically ill folks, the internet is largely non-optional. If you want to maintain relationships of any kind, they’re going to be mediated in some form by internet connected platforms and apps. Maybe it’s how unavoidable it is that’s lead to me seeing how negatively it seems to be impacting me - especially over the last couple years. As my final few weak ties seemed to dissolve, I was only really left with contact with the masses, internet communities where strangers had become increasingly reactive and narrow minded and platforms had steadily steered me toward what would make me feel like absolute shit to keep me scrolling. It was a nightmare.

At the same time, I feel incredibly lucky. My queer platonic partner and I often talk about how we were blessed to be born on the bridge. We got to see the old world that existed before the Internet utterly and completely obliterated it yet we got to grow up with the new technologies in a way that allowed us to be true digital natives. Neither older millennials nor younger zoomers can quite say the same. In the first part of this year, I leveraged everything I knew about these technologies to try to find a better relationship with them but as we move into the darker part of the year once more, I’ve shifted to finding inspiration in the past.

Today, I’m feeling inspired by my dad’s stories of his small West Virginia town on Sundays. Folks would get up, go to church, have lunch or an early dinner with family or friends, then walk around in the evenings and chat with neighbors on their porches or visit with folks who were ill. It wasn’t like that every single Sunday - life happened after all - but that was the norm that they sought to return to. I remember visiting with my grandmother before she passed in 2019 and neighbors would stop by or call to ask after her - especially on Sundays so some of it even still remains.

Which is all to say that I’m going to experiment with weekly newsletters again.

A few years ago, I spent a few months writing a weekly email update with a handful of pictures to some friends who’d volunteered for the experiment. The goal was to find a way to connect outside of the platforms I was drowning in. One person out of about ten consistently replied and chatted every few weeks and we got to know each other better. Which was proof to me that it could work but also proof that there’s not a lot of interest in it. My hope with doing it through micro.blog is that the effort to output ratio is a little more worth it for me at least.

So this will serve as the first and a template for me in the future when I’m not sure what to throw together. Whether we’ve been friends for decades or you just like what I post on Tumblr/Mastodon, you’re welcome to follow along.

Overall this week… went pretty well. We got some rain - too much really - in the beginning of the week and I absolutely loved it. On Friday, Ria and I dressed up in our costumes (Howl and Sophie from Howl’s Moving Castle) and went into Frankfort. I got to achieve a lifelong dream of walking into my favorite indie bookstore and buy whatever books I fucking felt like it. I walked out with about 9. In my quest to get off of screens more, I’ve been reading a lot more and quickly discovered a dearth of fiction and memoir/essay in my collection.

Speaking of which, I finished the Lemire run of Moon Knight this week and absolutely loved it. I think overall the plural representation is really well done and the art styles are incredibly fun. I’d genuinely recommend it to anyone who’d interested in some plural/DID rep or who just loved a good psychological superhero arc.

My work… Most of my “work” time this week was spent in Canva. I created a new daily page for myself to use in my Everbook system. Setting up each day from scratch was taking a too much energy and I wanted to have a reminder of my keystone routines since they’d started to fall by the way side. I really like the page I came up with and it’s certainly served it’s purpose this week. I also spent some time working on a planner set up for my mom. She is hemipalegic from her stroke a few years ago and has gone through a few systems that aren’t quite what she’s needed. I’m setting up a discbound system for her and designing some pages to go in it.

My important relationships… Biscuit is doing well overall. We got word a couple weeks ago that he’s got an enlarged heart which is likely the beginning stages of heart failure so he started a medication that should hopefully help him longer than he otherwise would. I don’t think it’s sunk in for us yet. We’ve been enjoying our time with him even more and the medications seem to be improving his health. Fingers crossed for a few more years with our best boy.

Ria is doing alright on the whole. She was hypomanic for a lot of August and September but has slid into more of a mixed episode than her usual depression. The tough part about her mixed episodes are that she’ll be pretty much normal until very suddenly there are big emotions. It’s been tough but I’m proud of her for doing what she can.

My health… My health has been so-so this week. I’ve been very fatigued lately so I’ve been trying really hard not to push it. I think when people read fatigued they read “really tired” but I mean proper fatigue, like laying on the bed fully clothed, too tired to get up in the middle of the day so all I can do is stare at wall for two hours level fatigued. It hasn’t been this bad in a while. I’m not totally sure why it’s gotten worse but thats ME/CFS for you.

My anxiety has also been quite bad. I get hit with wave of being convinced I have cancer and am gonna die in a few months - which nothing in my medical tests and appointments remotely suggests. I used to have this happen when I was younger (teens/early twenties) and I’m not sure why it’s back with such a vengeance. Thankfully, I have more tools to ride it out these days.

If we know each other, say hi! Feel free to reply here or send me an email - marzcorbeau@proton.me