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InkTober 2017: Day 2 – Divided

Divided: that’s a loaded word for me. For a long while, I’ve been feeling that my life is divided. It got that way four years ago, on the day my illness showed up. I didn’t know it then but, since the first moments, it divided time into before and after illness. I’ve tried not to think of my life that way, at least not from a negative perspective, because I know that my life is greater than these two dimensions. However, the truth is, I have to acknowledge that my life is not the same.

It may never be what it was before the day two extra-strength Tylenols weren’t enough to soothe the pain as it grew in my lower abdomen. It may never be the same as it was before I lost control of my trembling body. Trembling that became uncontrollable shaking because the pain was so overwhelming. My life may never be the same as it was before the ambulance ride that took an eternity to get me to the hospital emergency room. Before the months of multiple doctors’ misdiagnoses or the reluctant surgeon’s year of waffling about whether she could or would ever try to help me by doing the surgery she trained to do. Nor may it become the same, as after illness, since finally having surgery didn’t result in the end of any of my pain.

The interesting thing is that the space I occupy now is nowhere near after illness. It can’t possibly be when there are moments when all I can think about is freeing my body of pain and when that pain-free time will become permanent. My current existence is probably better characterized as ‘since illness’, which is an altogether different division. So far, each pain treatment I’ve undergone has delivered negligible short-lived relief or completely failed; and if the ongoing pain treatments are any indication, I may never achieve an after illness state.

Yet, I must continue living without losing hope, or my sanity. I have to keep myself grounded to avoid causing myself unnecessary grief because, as I’ve been taught: suffering is wanting something other than what exists in the present moment. Therefore, looking back at what was in my past (before illness) or what’s in store for my future (after illness) is unhelpful.

My life didn’t stop because of my illness. Although I fully accept that it changed, there’s no need to divide it into pieces and compartmentalize events into good and bad. I will, however, continue to live in the present, mindful of focussing on each moment as it comes.

The image I’ve chosen today to illustrate the word divided is a pie. We divide whole pies into slices to feed others and ourselves. If a thing must be divided I prefer to look at the possible positive outcomes from its division.

 

Adrift

Sometimes I feel as if I’m floating through my life without any control or a meaningful destination or goal. I haven’t always felt this way, of course, but because I am housebound most days and time passes in the blink of an eye and I can’t point to what I’ve accomplished in recent months – years actually – it’s hard not to feel adrift. It’s difficult not to feel rudderless and without direction, as I pass from one painful hour to the next. Even when I do things to feel busy, to occupy all the passing hours, it’s hard not to compare this current life to the life I knew before; and, I wonder when I’ll stop the comparison and just accept things as they are and just be.

I know from experience floating in blue-green waters of oceans and seas, that there is nothing wrong with spending time, days even, letting my body float and drift. However, those days were numbered, planned, and chosen specifically for me to do nothing else. Those were days that I earned and payed for with hours upon hours of work. They were handfuls of isolated days within a year or more. When I could leave behind the demands on my time as I disconnected from the world and plunged into the peaceful sound of warm waves kissing beaches of powdery sand or sometimes pebbly shores of stones worn smooth by the never-ceasing waves.

It feels different, doing nothing now. As if, I have not earned this time. This time my body didn’t plan or ask for. This time that blurs one day into the next. Now, as I float over different waves, waves that are not peaceful, warm, or calm. Waves that batter my body, instead of keeping me buoyed under cloudless bright skies. I feel as though I need to do something every day to earn this time; and each day that passes without me producing or completing something makes me feel indebted to some thing in the universe that I can’t see, but I can feel hovering over me. A thing waiting for payment as my pain-filled body is carried farther adrift.

I know these feelings aren’t truthful. I know these thoughts surface because I still haven’t, after all this time, fully come to terms with the reality that doing nothing most days is okay because it’s all I can do. I know that if a friend or family member was living through this illness and having these thoughts and feelings, I would tell them they were being too hard on themselves. Yet, when the challenge is our own, it’s hard to show ourselves the same compassion we would extend to another. It’s easy to know the truth but it’s harder to accept it and live accordingly.

It amazes me how difficult it is to feel comfortable doing nothing, especially when we know it’s the best thing for our bodies. I don’t know when I will accept it. When I will truly believe there is nothing wrong with doing nothing because my body needs rest or it is racked with too much pain. However, in the meantime, I feel that imagining the sensation of my body floating on waves, free and weightless, may not be a bad image to hold on to when I think of myself adrift and without direction.

Adrift - Sand Swirl - November 2016