Note: Contains talk of my body doing odd things!
Sometimes bodies do weird things. Sometimes they’re symptoms of other problems, but sometimes they’re just harmless, passing experiences.
I often turn to google when I have a problem, and sometimes I can’t find people who have experienced the same thing, no matter how hard I look. But the things I feel are still valid, even if someone else hasn’t experienced them or written about them.
So, I am writing about some of (what I think are) the more unusual things I’ve experienced. Have these ever happened to you? Are they things that other people experience and just don’t talk about? Or are they commonly known and my googling just wasn’t thorough enough? Or are they rare? Or is it just me?
- Once, I got so dissociated that I saw the room spin and change colors.
- For maybe seven months, songs didn’t get stuck in my head. This was after I was in a bad car accident, and it’s possible that it was caused by my concussion, PTSD, depression, anxiety, lack of sleep, or some combination of those. I only noticed it when songs started getting stuck in my head again and I realized that it hadn’t happened in a long time.
- About a year ago, I had a lot of pain along the skin of my legs every time I put on pants or leggings for about a month and a half. It happened with all fabrics, soaps, and lotions, both when I had shaved and when I hadn’t, etc. I didn’t have a rash, but when my legs touched something, I got painful, prickly tingles along my legs that sometimes spread to other parts of my body, along the skin on my back and chest, my neck, my face, scalp, and arms. The electrical prickles also made my legs jerk involuntarily when they get really bad. Anxiety and paying attention to it seemed to make them worse, and moving my legs seemed to make them better. Not wearing pants or leggings or anything touching my legs also made them better. I went to a doctor who said she didn’t know what was going on and referred me to a specialist, who I didn’t end up going to. And then a few weeks later, they went away. Since then, they have come back every now and then, but it’s not as bad anymore. It normally hurts after I take a shower, and I can make it better by wearing loose-fitting clothes like pajamas after and by distracting myself by reading a book or watching tv.
- I broke my collar bone during a car accident. For a couple weeks after, before I had surgery, my pain would spike from a 2 or 3 to a 9 or 10 when I did something that moved my collar bone out of its broken location. When I have flashbacks, my collar bone hurts in the same sudden-spike-of-intense-pain way. If the pain were a musical note, it would be a sharp, loud, high-pitched note, like a “ping.” I feel like Harry Potter sometimes because I wake up from a nightmare with my (surgery) scar hurting.
- Sometimes I pass out after exercising. I feel tired after a run and lie down to take a quick breather/nap, and then I wake up an hour later.
- I once had my period for 5 weeks. I was bleeding continuously for five weeks. Sometimes it was heavier, and sometimes it was lighter. Eventually it stopped, thank goodness!
- I used to have repeated nightmares that involved my family and me hurt and dying in our house. After doing prolonged exposure therapy and overcoming some parts of the trauma, I had a nightmare which started off similarly. But then I flew around in the air, fixed every disaster, and literally put out all the fires. I solved my nightmare without intending to specifically do that.
There is a wide breadth of human experience. There are and have been lots of people on this planet, and we have collectively experienced many, many things.
What odd things have you experienced?
Something over Nothing 