If I can sum up my sedentary life through a part of my body, it is the hands. The muffintops and fatty thighs are better places to spot my inactivity, but it is in my shaky hands poised on the edge of the keyboard that the heavy strands of my life converge. I used to think that this was a benign condition—that this would go away with some strengthening, which it did for sometime, that some yoga could fix this, as it did. But during this time I also started taking antidepressants, antipsychotics…the whole lot. And a common side effect was tremors; of the hands, involuntary twitching, sudden jerks of the leg. The tremors varied as my medications were changed and I chalked up the tremors to the medicines.
I don’t think I am wrong. But I think there is more to it.
In the build up towards a session of caning, in school, my extremities would start trembling in anticipation of the sharp bite of the cane. The first time I touched a girl’s breasts, I fumbled and struggled to hold them in my palms. And I remember a mathematics test in grade eleven, sitting at the first desk close to the wall, trying to calm down my shivering hands because I was sure I would flunk the test. It appears that tremors are closer to my self than medicine would allow me to believe.
As I grew older, I found my hands shivering, trembling, struggling as they tremored their way through various situations. I learned that they are the first clues to an impending anxiety attack. I observed my fingers as they hovered above the keyboard, shaking ever so slightly and ready to hit the spot between the keys as my brain tried to re-establish connections. I realised that they do the same when there is not enough food in my stomach. They do it when I am in public and has to face people. They do it when the familiar sting of sadness hits my throat and I am reminded of empty words, empty rooms, and empty gestures of charity. It is impossible for the fingers to settle in space, steadily following my gaze, when I gesticulate as I think.
The bottom line: Essential tremors are essential not only in a medical conception of the body; they are the essence of a troubled, unstable life. If you cure the tremor, you cure the illness.