Every morning I wake up hoping and praying I feel better. It isn't happening. What is happening, however, is my mental strength is being unduly tested. Severely. Each day my grasp on health and stability slips further from my reach. I keep telling myself this will pass, the darkness will lift, the flare will subside, and I will NOT lose all my hard-fought progress to this illness again.
Not reacting to such a temporary state of being is the greatest gift I can give myself, right? For every time I let my life swirl into the gutter of chaos, it's only that much more work to get back up again. And I always get up again. So if I just don't slide so far down in the first place, this never-ending flare is entirely manageable, right? Except ten years isn't temporary. While I've been on an upswing (albeit a very hard climb) these last few years, the last ten years have been utterly life destroying. And I'm so unbelievably damaged, that is what's making it so hard to get through this flare with a modicum of hope.
So I have a choice. I can keep reacting. I can keep being pissed off because I hurt so bad or am getting confused so easily. I can continue to feel imprisoned in my life because of my illness. I can continue to hate the world because nobody can help me get better, or even remotely understands how sick I am. I can continue to collect injustices and live in fear. Each day can be a deeper descent into the madness of sick. But I've seen the bottom of where this road leads, and it's an unbearably awful place.
So I can, once again, stop the ride and accept my reality. Soften my approach and allow love into my heart. Start looking at a half-full cup through rose-tinted glasses, damn it! I know this is expecting the extraordinary, when I'm such a naturally grouchy and feisty individual, but it's the only way I know how to refuse to let sick be all I am. By counting one blessing at a time, one choice not to react at a time, one push to positive at a time, maybe it won't make waiting for that elusive tomorrow so hard.
Thanks for joining,
Leah
Thank you!!
ReplyDeleteI'm so sorry you are feeling that way. We here know how sick you are, even if others in the world don't. We know, because we feel the same way.
ReplyDeleteI just started working full time again. I have a pharmacy of medication in my desk to knock back whatever symptoms hit me each day. I'm so beyond tired and in such pain at the end of the day, that I can't do anything else. I don't know how I'm going to be able to do this for a couple more decades. It's so hard, and it hurts so much. Even making "fun" plans scare me now, because I wonder how I'm possibly going to have the energy to follow through. It's awful.
I appreciate your blog, because then I don't feel so alone. Healthy people don't understand and they want to go out and do normal things that I can't do. Thank you for what you do.