Waiting in the Fog

 When the body whispers, listen.

They didn’t see me. Just murmurs of “indigestion” tossed like crumbs — as if I were a dog begging for scraps.

Stress — the convenient catchall for bodies that won’t behave.

“Your diet’s all over the place,” they said. As if that explained the mornings lost to sludge-thick confusion, the bruises that bloomed without reason, the exhaustion dragging behind me like a second skin.

I didn’t argue. I rehearsed my alibis: too much pressure, too little pause, a long, slow neglect of the self I was meant to live in.

But it didn’t start with hospitals. It started with choices. Small, unremarkable shortcuts I told myself were inconsequential: skipping meals, skimping on sleep, choosing what was fast over what was right.

It crept into my routines, into the workdays that swallowed evenings, the weekends that disappeared into errands and exhaustion. Friends noticed I laughed less. Partners complained I drifted. I ignored them. I ignored me.

Years of imbalance don’t scream. They whisper. A little bloating. A little bleeding. Clothes that pinched. A hunger that flickered, then vanished. A silence where appetite used to live. And in that silence, a quiet terror — a sense that my body had been negotiating with me all along, and I had been losing, slowly, silently.

That’s sub-health — the slow, invisible drift from “not feeling great” to “not feeling anything at all.”

Now there’s a chart. A name: cirrhosis. It landed like a full stop at the end of a sentence I didn’t know I was writing.

There’s no cure. Just rules. Spreadsheets of what I can’t eat. Timetables for bloodwork. Scans I no longer try to decipher.

Some days I’m hopeful. Others, just quiet. And yet, I notice the small victories: a walk without collapse, a morning I wake without nausea, a day where I actually taste my food.

I don’t talk much about the future now. But I study the past: how I missed the signs. The moments I chose convenience over care. The subtle betrayals of my body that I rationalised as stress, luck, or fate.

The haze hasn’t cleared. But I’ve stopped calling it weather. I’ve started listening. Really listening.

I reach for what nurtures me — a meal prepared slowly, a pause mid-day, the brief check-in with my own heartbeat. I acknowledge the debt of decades of neglect, and I meet it with attention rather than denial.

This body is still faltering. Still failing. Still fighting. And now, I fight with it, not against it.

Because sub-health isn’t just biological. It’s relational, mental, ethical: how we treat ourselves, how we respond to warnings, how we forgive the past without surrendering the present.

I don’t know what comes next. But I know that recognition is the first act of care. And for the first time, the fog is a place I can navigate, not just survive.

–––

These stories aren’t rare.
They’re just rarely told early enough.
Most decline begins in silence —
a skipped check-up, a cough you dismiss, a breath you pretend is fine.

She didn’t need saving.
Just a warning sooner.

––– Pause Here –––

If this feels familiar, you’re not alone.
Most illness doesn’t start with a bang.
It starts when silence becomes habit.

Lingzhi isn’t a miracle.
It’s a habit.
A quiet, daily way to care for the body —
before silence becomes suffering.

Lingzhi is a traditional food taken to support general well-being. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. For personalised advice, please consult a qualified healthcare practitioner.

#SubHealthStories #HealthIsAHabit #HappyHealthyLingzhi