Just before sunset I put on my neglected running shoes and went for a walk. As the sun set over the wetlands, my mom and I watched the dabbling ducks dive for the last meal of the day. We watched the ibises and the egrets fly home in groups of threes and fours. We watched the colors change in the sky and on the water, and we just walked.
After more than two months in bed with pain so big standing up made it worse, walking in the cold fresh air felt like a baptism. It is hard to feel full of life when you are stuck in bed, day in and day out. It is hard to feel full of life when every movement, sound, and light hurts. It is hard to feel full of life when your whole world feels as big as as your bed on a good day and as big as your body on a bad day. Just being outside, feeling my muscles and joints reawaken, I felt like I had been given a completely different body.
Recording the end of my migraine, maxed out at 999.99 hours
Even better, I felt like I had been given hope. The chronic illness journey involves constantly toeing the line between hope and fear. Naturally, any time my health gets worse or I experience a prolonged migraine attack my thoughts turn more easily to fear. Fear of getting worse or never getting better, fear of side effects and complications, fear of judgement and abandonment. These are the days when hope is at its most powerful but is the most difficult to draw upon.
As I move further along on my chronic pain journey I am getting better at finding joy and hope during periods of illness. I expect this to be a continuous challenge filled with ups and downs befitting the cyclical nature of grief and gratitude. When the pain subsides, though, the joy is overwhelming. All of a sudden the hope and gratitude that I have struggled to hold onto come easily. Watching the sun set and the birds dance I am reminded that my place in the world is so much more important than my illness. I am reminded that I am so much more important than my illness.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things. – Mary Oliver
Amen amen amen amen. Praying they are gone forever!!!!