Nothing Was Wrong — Until My Body Refused to Stay Quiet

At first, it was subtle.
Easy to ignore.
Easy to explain away.
Easy to treat like a fluke.

Not pain.
Not illness.
Just discomfort —
the kind that makes you pause
because your body feels louder than it should.

So I did what most reasonable humans do
when their body starts acting suspiciously.

I went to the doctor.
Then another one.
Then a specialist.
Then the kind of appointment where they say,
“Let’s just run a few more tests,”
and you nod politely
while preparing for either a dramatic diagnosis
or the relief of being told you’re fine.

Blood work.
Scans.
Vitals.
Questions.

And then — repeatedly — the same answer:

Everything looks normal.

Which is a deeply confusing thing to hear
when you feel anything but.

Because “normal” on paper
doesn’t cancel out the fact
that your body is very clearly doing something.

I wasn’t ignoring medical advice.
I wasn’t avoiding help.
I wasn’t trying to manifest my way out of anything.

I was trying to fix it
the way we’re taught to fix things.

Headache? Take a pill.
Stomach ache? Change your diet.
Pain? Treat the symptom and move on.

That usually works.

Except this time, it didn’t.

The flare-ups got louder.
Less subtle.
Less ignorable.
More dramatic, if I’m being honest.

This wasn’t a whisper anymore.
This was my body pulling the fire alarm.

And that’s when the fear set in.

Because when doctors can’t find a clear reason,
your mind fills in the blanks.

You start Googling at 2 a.m.
You start wondering what they’re missing.
You start bracing for worst-case scenarios
while trying to look calm and reasonable
in waiting rooms.

But somewhere in the middle of all of that —
between appointments and “everything looks fine” —
something uncomfortable landed.

What if my body wasn’t malfunctioning?

What if it was responding?

Not to a disease.
Not to a hidden condition.

But to me.

To how long I’d been tense.
How little I’d rested.
How much I’d normalized living on edge.
How often I’d overridden my own limits
and called it strength.

How often I’d lived in quiet emotional overwhelm
and treated it like “just life.”

How often I’d wondered
why do I get overstimulated so easily,
without realizing how little space
I was giving my nervous system to breathe.

That realization wasn’t empowering.

It was unsettling.

Because it meant this wasn’t something
I could just outsource
to a prescription or a treatment plan.

It also didn’t mean I’d done anything wrong.

It meant my body had been keeping score
I didn’t know I was playing.

At the time, I thought this was the moment
something went wrong.

I didn’t yet understand
it was the moment
something finally refused
to stay quiet.

This wasn’t the answer.

It was the interruption.

And once it happened,
there was no going back
to pretending everything was fine.