I woke up on Wednesday morning in a cold sweat with a terrible malaise and sinus pressure squeezing my brain in a vise grip. My instinct is to power through and say it is not that bad. And yet, when I have a staff member who does that, I make them go and rest. It felt disingenuous, so I called out sick. Even then, I felt the engrained pressure to work.

I do remember that I was the most straight-laced snake on camp. I got that reputation because I wanted to be seen as a Good and Useful staff member and would pass along whatever information came my way. And much came my way. Camps exist in a bubble. At this camp, we jokingly referred to ours as The Dome. The Dome bounces all information inside it to be all around it and anyone with half a modicum of intuition can put many disparate pieces together. But The Dome does not just bounce around facts, it bounces around speculation and rumors. When you put 60 people from the ages of 16 to 20-something together for an entire summer, it is easy for things to get twisted. All stories are true, few are accurate.

At that ungodly hour of the night that may have already turned into Friday, I woke up and ran to the bathroom in the cabin to vomit. About every 30 minutes, I would have that insatiable urge and miserably sat in bed waiting for the next attack and until the Health House opened at 7. The healthcare providers were clear that if wasn’t an emergency, you wait until 7. I woke my co-counselor up at about 6:55 and told him what was up. Apparently, he had heard it and thought it was a kid. “The parental instincts are strong in this one” is a phrase I doubt is ever spoken about him.

In the Health House, they were preparing for med pass and had me wait in the living room. I spent an hour miserably resting and trying to sip the Gatorade they gave me while others checked on me. As I laid there, I thought about how this must be what a hangover feels like and how others must think I am a Terrible Person who uses the alcohol.

When I was about 14, I was diagnosed with OCD. I haven’t had many compulsions in my life, at least not the stereotypical ones. Checking is my main compulsion and it’s never nothing as stereotypical as appliances. Rather it is in reassurance-seeking and mentally replaying events. That day, I seriously considered if I actually did use the alcohol and was lying to myself so well I didn’t remember.

When one of the providers, both of whom were EMT’s and one dismissed a concerning episode I had two weeks prior as the “Mammalian Dive Reflex,” came to check on me, he remarked that if he didn’t know me, he’d think I was hungover. They let me sleep in the health house through that morning. I was not feeling much better, in fact I felt worse. The emesis didn’t return… Because I didn’t eat, but the malaise grew worse. And near the end of my break, my supervisor comes in with the other healthcare provider, this time the dismisser. I am told I have to go back with my cabin group because my co-counselor needed his break. I, wanting to not be seen as Terrible or a Bother, went along with it. I sat behind my kids at lineup, hunched over and holding my head from pain. Someone put their flannel over me and I remember a Leadership staff member, the one who most clearly saw their staff as people and did not view this role as a fiefdom where they could exert power and authority, tried their best to check-in on me.

The rest of the day is a blur. At this point, I think that my kids led the cabin themselves and I was just there. When my co came back, he made me return to the Health House. There, the dismisser and someone I looked up to tried to convince me I was fine. I had to beg to rest, and they asked, “is this something you’ll get over after your day off?” Implicitly, I could see a threat. Perhaps they meant it out of concern, but I felt as if I was a Burden and that my job was at risk if I didn’t pull myself from my bootstraps and heal myself. They acquiesced to one hour. My supervisor comes in and asks if I can run the Zip Line. I say no. She covers, but I am required to be with my cabin instead. I spend the day miserable and as a body, not a productive member of the team. A friend asked why I wasn’t resting, I said they wouldn’t let me. It was not until my break that evening that I finally had some calories (about half of a vegetarian hamburger) and finished my first small Gatorade that I actually felt better.

Now, each time I am unwell and know that I must rest, I am filled with doubt. This incident is always on my mind whenever I am sick, the Hydrogen Peroxide spray used to clean finally makes me loopy, or a migraine hits. I constantly check for the sensation that maybe this time I really am faking it. Inevitably, I can find the sensation if I try hard enough. Friday, I thought that maybe I was actually faking it. I could ignore the signals if I really tried hard enough, but then I looked in the mirror. Conjunctivitis. And worse still, it was in both eyes.

Did you know that viruses, such as the ones that cause the Common Cold or Adenovirus, can cause Pink Eye? The lacrimal glands live on the top portion of the eye cavities and are responsible for creating moisture that allows our eyes to function. They drain through the inner corner of the eye to the lacrimal sac and then through the nasolacrimal duct into your nose. When we cry or our eyes water, the fluid comes from the upper outer corner of the eye, and the increased production causes our noses to run and our inner corner to back up. That inner corner is called the lacrimal lake and increased tear production literally causes it to flood.

The nasolacrimal duct is the culprit of viral conjunctivitis. In my case, congestion in the sinuses (and probably infection) travelled from the upper sinus cavities through the nose and up the nasolacrimal duct. I looked as if I time-travelled to Woodstock, so yes, I am sick. No amount of obsessive checking can refute the evidence I get whenever I look in a mirror.

In my resting, I have watched a lot of TikToks. Okay, it’s only between 1 and 2 hours a day, but still. A lot of TikToks. There are many things that I could write on that would be Topical and might get me hits. But, I don’t do this for views. If I did, it wouldn’t be two-and-a-half years since the last article. I do have thoughts on the Cornell 7’s brutal attack and the Covid Conscious Lesbian Dive Bar discourse, but to be honest I am not going to say anything that hasn’t been said ad nauseum before. Rather, I want to talk about a video I saw about financial advice.

If Business School taught me anything, it was practical advice about resumes, interviews, and personal finance. You get One Page on a resume, dress a step more formal to an interview, and, even though the global economy is built on 1300 Fort Knox’s worth of debt¹ , should always pay off your credit cards each month. This video was not about that. Well, take a second and watch it here.

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Hi, my name is Cody and I am a cortisol addict.

“Hi Cody,” the crowd says.

I love a big sweeping change. Well, I don’t but it seems to be the most efficient way to improve things. When I get extremely stressed, I finally fold all of my laundry, wash every dish in my sink, clean the table, reorganize my collection of Magic cards, or finally do that project I have been meaning to get around to. But if it is not stressful? It’s not worth it. Why would I do the small thing that is boring when I can let it pile up and do it when it stresses me out enough that I feel amped up on cortisol and adrenaline?

Emails? I will get to them when there are hundreds.

Laundry? When I am almost out of clean clothes.

Order prescription refills? There better be less than 7 pills in that bottle.²

And the list goes on and on and on. In part, this is because of my family of origin. Whenever it came time to clean or go through things, my mom would get very stressed and anxious. The routine was very predictable. Mom gets tired of X being a mess and starts to clean. Mom complains that no one is helping her and no one ever helps her. We try to help and then get yelled at for not doing it the right way.

But the other facet to this is that I was diagnosed with PTSD not too long ago.³ I am in treatment and this time I actually feel like I can tell my therapist things. She has a name that is very Portland, embeds trauma-informed practices into everything that she does, and we are building internal resources before we get into actual processing. My last therapist and I went to brain spotting very quickly and that was A Lot.

I am addicted to cortisol because I have a stress disorder caused by a series of distressing events from the ages of 19 to 🤷. No, seriously, I do not know when or if it has stopped. There hasn’t been a Capital T Trauma for a few years, but there has been a lot of trauma exposure since that has impacted my life. So it really isn’t a wonder why I am struggling and, learning about cortisol seeking behaviors, a lot of things make more sense. I procrastinate because my body is not used to a lack of cortisol. I thrive in crises and chaotic environments because I am seeking cortisol.

Now, some of it is structural issues with my work. I inherited a system where, due to choices made by the people before me, it is expected that the Director is constantly available, always working to maximum capacity, and the customer is ALWAYS right. I am doing too many jobs and cannot focus on doing any one job well. So when I get sick, things go Poorly. It is not just a personal problem, but my personal problem does have a symbiotic relationship with the systemic issues.

And the systemic issues are within my control to change. I have already worked to restructure things so that I do not burn through my Food Services Manager. I spent a lot of time and energy working to build a system and a culture where they can take days off without things falling apart. It’s not perfect and there is still a lot of work to do, but we have taken action. I wash dishes a lot less than when I started in this role and that is a great thing. I also hired a cleaning service so that it was not on me to clean all of camp. I don’t like cleaning, it takes a lot out of me physically, and I am very expensive housekeeper. And, I am working to hire an Assistant Director and am training an Office Assistant to help with admin tasks. It already is feeling more manageable, but now the harder part is to deal with my own issues.

I am deeply grateful for my boss. Not only has he supported me in making these changes, but he is empathetic to my personal struggles. I know that I am in a psychologically safe environment, even though it is also extremely stressful, and feel supported by him and our board chair to work to get unstuck. And so, I guess that’s why I am writing again. Diminished Creativity is a primary response I have to trauma and trauma exposure, and writing is my primary creative outlet. But, as I learned, big sweeping changes where I write every week without fail is a recipe for failure. One Day I Will Find is back with new writing every now and then.

1. Americans will use any metric of measure aside from the Metric System. ↩︎
2. I hate that AI has monopolized this structure. But, it does do it everywhere to constantly make it seem like the point is big and profound, so at least I actually write paragraphs with complex sentences. I hate simple sentences. ↩︎
3. My favorite pastor I work with said she’s going to speak to Jesus about this. She is my possibility model right now. If she can get away with calling her lay leader an ignorant slut, I can get away with the awkward times I put my foot in my mouth. Though, honestly, I really like all the Methodist ministers I work with. They’re cool people. ↩︎