Survival Is Mine

Today I rejoice, because one of the hardest trials of my life is behind me, and I survived. It was hit or miss for a while. The motivated and unblemished 2014 I was certain awaited the other side of January 1st didn't quite offer me the clean slate I hoped for. Instead, while I was desperately trying to move my life forward, exhaustive circumstances kept slapping me around. How many times can a person get knocked down before realizing standing up is sometimes just too hard? I guess I don't know how to not fight for my own survival, though. I've been doing it too long to stop now, for crying out loud! So I kept going...

At some point during the last few weeks my epic amount of hard work and determination to achieve a better life started paying off in spades. It wasn't something I even realized was happening until there was enough progress to look back and see it. In that instant of awareness I realized the greatest tool I possess is my brain. After all, it was my brain urging me to dodge negativity like a speeding bullet, my brain forcing me to exercise when I woke up feeling like half a human, and again my brain making me get my ass off the couch and stick vegetables down my juicer so I could get all that nutrition down my throat and boost my horribly depressed immune system. Thankfully my brain recently had a breakthrough I've been desperate for, allowing me to now go to bed at 2am, fall asleep like a normal human and wake up at 10am ready to have a day. Is this what it feels like to have some control over ones own circumstances? It had been so long I forgot.

I realized if I hadn't changed my attitude I would still be on the endless victim Ferris wheel wondering why my life was so hard. Everything I hold near and dear was on the brink of collapse. My family was about to topple head first into the raging sea of chaos. Had I continued to believe what I possessed at that moment was as good as it gets and all I was entitled to, we would have. Coming out of the abyss scared me silly, because I was able to look back on my life and see just how far into survival mode I sunk. There is so much work to repair my life into something worth living again. Survival mode is no way to survive, yet the horrible reality far too many chronic illness patients simmer in year after year with no end in sight. Hocus pocus, mysticism or magic potions didn't get me here. Looking under every rock for the elusive concept of health, and believing it could be mine, well that was the first step to living again.

Thanks for joining,

Leah