It is more evident every day that I think about a lot of things, all day, on each day that I am awake and walking this earth. In a way, I've always known this about myself. In the same way that I know I love cats and hate milk and can't keep my hands from touching any soft fur or fabric in my line of sight.

The things that I think about are not just things that I know, but also things that I don't know. I'm curious about the unknown, and I dive deep when I find a new nib to gnaw on. I have a tendency (that can feel pathological) to ruminate on things: mostly bad things, sometimes delicious experiences, and, if I'm so cursed, the most awful earworm. Over time, though, there have been ways to drown out the thoughts: some by choice, some by my body's own creation. Over the last year, I've come to learn that the ways in which my soft tissues and nerves chose to tell me what growing old felt like was actually not aging at all, but a chronic health condition. Inflammation of the body, and by extension, the mind and eventually the soul. I still don't know how I chased this thing down because, lord, I was exhausted. Tired of being tired, too achy and creaky to move, and despondent about it all. The condition of what was then the current state was its own numbing. The pain itself can absolutely numb you out. As can the relay race of one solution or another, along with insisting to myself that I just needed to be normal and think my way out of this. As if my ills were caused by the spooking apart of my herd of thoughts, and merely rounding them up and driving them home would let my body settle down for the night.

I am on my way to healing (far different from a path or a journey) without pills, treatments, or therapy. Instead, it is food and changes to what and how I consume that is healing. A removal of the poisons from my land and water. I'm not talking about those specifics today, though. It's what's happened to my thoughts and my mind that is more fascinating to me in this current moment. I'm still working towards being allowed more by my bodily self, but my neural pathways as roundabouted within my skull... they have already found a change.

This piece was originally published on my Hey World blog on the indicated publication date.