Why It Wouldn't Be Better

There is often a "trigger" event, usually an accident or illness, that sparks the neurological hailstorm known as Fibromyalgia. Mine was a momentous week when I tried to execute five massive life changing events in one seven day period. The chaos ended and the pain started. What ensued was a drastic overhaul of my reality as my basic functioning broke down over the course of the next few years. Every plan and expectation for the future I ever had was affected. Altered. Demolished, quite frankly. Normal became a heartbreaking memory and medical doctors became the bane of my existence. I only existed in the strangest kind of hell I could possibly describe. One where you think your muscles are gonna strip from your bones with pain that feels like a fillet knife through flesh. And turning the bedroom light off flips a blaring ON switch in your brain that won't slow down so you can't sleep but can't catch and ride the manic either. And you feel like this all day every day and it only gets worse and worse but every medical test returns normal results. And as you start to doubt your own sanity life slips from your grasp and you ceases to exist with the other sleeping and laughing people staring at you wondering what on earth your problem is. Like I said, strangest kind of hell.

Too many times during the last seven years I lamented the life I left. I thought about the career I didn't get to continue and the friendships I was too sick to keep up with. The lifestyle I certainly would have lived if I hadn't been struck by this mysterious destroyer of all things good and right. And I am always happy and laughing and rich and satisfied in this fantasy life of mine. Things I oh so was not before I got sick were magically mine, had I not gotten sick. The other day this suddenly struck me as preposterous. Why do I automatically assume things would be better? What if they were worse? What if I went down in a plane or lost limbs, in this magical life of my fantasy? Or had an ill child or was struck with terrible cancer? Surely these things are far worse than Fibromyalgia. So who is to say that wouldn't have been my fate? Who on earth is to say it wouldn't be better, and who is to say it would?

Life is a massive collection of experiences. Mine have taught me what a tiny little slice of all that's possible it really is. Again and again it has been slammed into me that I better grab as much meaning and purpose and love and laughter and passion as I can, no matter my circumstance, because as far as I know I am only getting to do this thing called life once. While I still can't answer why I got Fibromyalgia, how come I had strokes or what on earth life would have been like if I hadn't gotten sick, I can say I appreciate things I never would have imagined. Yesterday I turned 36. It was a very contemplative day for me. I thought about my birthday two years ago when I was given a stay of execution on the death sentence handed down just two days before. Never was there a sweeter day, until yesterday. Because quite frankly recovering from those strokes was a different kind of living hell, but another around the boxing ring for sure. I have finally recovered from the recovery and life is making itself a path again. I know we are supposed to hate getting older. The wrinkles, the sagging skin, those glory years fading further into the background. Hogwash I say! I have earned every crinkle around my eyes and the right to every, "When I was your age we didn't have a remote control and had to get up to change the channel..." story I want to tell. And the sweet satisfaction of knowing, just for today, life is still mine to live. 

Thanks for joining,

Leah