Mental Illness = Physical Illness
Saturday, January 30th, 2010As a teenager I discovered the cure for car-sickness. Just drive.
I would drive down through the Ozark Mountains in Missouri to our lake cottage each weekend from St. Louis where I grew up. I’d sit in the back seat and be fine until we got into the mountain curves and then that life-long problem would come rushing on. Yuck.
I’d ask my dad to pull over and let me drive. The minute I’d get my hands on the wheel sitting in the driver’s seat, my illness would clear up and immediately disappear. I’d be fine from then on as long as I drove.
It got so that whenever we got to a certain little town, Dad would just automatically pull over and I would take over the driving. I don’t remember the name of the town, but I do know that it was just before we got to the mountains.
Years later, when I was in my 30s, I found myself one afternoon on a mini vacation out at sea with some friends standing out on the bow of a pontoon sail boat hanging on to the mast enjoying the salt spray and the afternoon breeze.
We had gone pretty far out into the ocean and we could no longer see the land. The boat was small and the swells were large; it was not at all a storm, but out little craft was kind of going up the side of one swell and down the other.
