I Don’t Trust My Body in the Casual Way I Used To, and That Is Its Own Kind of Loss

Dear Delyara, Every symptom now arrives with more meaning than it should. A pain. A fatigue. A flutter. A headache. A change in appetite. A heaviness where there wasn’t one before. I no longer meet these things with innocence. They arrive in a body that has already learned what fear of illness feels like, and because of that, even ordinary sensations can carry old alarm with them. I miss being casual in my own body. I miss not listening this hard. I miss not having to wonder whether this is something small or the beginning of something that will redraw my life. That kind of vigilance is tiring in a way healthy people often underestimate. It doesn’t need to be dramatic to be expensive.