It starts nine, ten days ago. I get up in the morning and the room is spinning. That’s not it exactly. Imagine the camera twisting sideways for a fraction of a second. Now stop. Go back. Loop it. Imagine an animated gif of the camera twisting sideways. The room spinning over and over again.
It’s worst when I first get up or lie down, or when my head moves into an awkward position or when I first close my eyes. I try to figure out what’s causing it. Blood moon? Allergies from being around cats? An possible ear infection from my bluetooth headset? The new buckwheat pillow? Maybe when I half-awoke in the middle of the night to grab a blanket my brain reset itself on my bent-over body. Maybe after getting a Fitbit I’ve outsourced my natural accelerometers to the ones on my wrist. Or it’s some kind of weird relationship-PTSD (an ex teaches yoga, and yoga is the least-doable activity in this condition). M tells me at meditation that she’s had vertigo too: “There are little cells that are supposed to go this way but they start going that way and nobody knows why.”
It comes and goes. The room looks funny. I feel taller, more disembodied, like I’m on some kind of drug. I have to pay more attention to where I’m looking, what I’m doing. My default state when kinetic is hesitation. But in the still, quite moments I find the whole thing more amusing than anything else. I use it as an excuse to skip kendo practice and ease up on my routine. I stop using the headset and wearing the Fitbit and I take my allergy meds, a kind of psychic elimination diet. And after a week I feel the hesitation go and then the room stop spinning.
It hasn’t spun for a couple days now, I’m happy to report. But I’m still finding my balance.