The flu. AUGH! I hate the flu. I don't have it, but it's in my house. And I want to kill it.
Speaking of the flu, don't you hate it when being sick like that just takes over your life? Whenever I get sick now, it reminds me of morning sickness. I remember thinking, If I could just get over this morning sickness, things will be normal. I didn't try to grasp the idea of living with the morning sickness, and just accepting a new type of life. A different me. Instead, I wanted my old self back.
I have been reading Pain Woman Takes Your Keys, by Sonya Huber. A great writer who lives with chronic pain, she fills her pages with honest, open, and exploited words to describe what she goes through and how her life has changed. An important part of her essays are her acceptance of living with a new body. A pained body. She will never go back to her old body, the one that could dance and run and leap. There has been a realization that her old body is gone, and now there is acceptance of the pain and learning to manage it and live with it as best she can.
I'm sure we all do this to some degree. If I could get my pre-baby body back. If I could feel as good as I did when I was 20. If I could get pregnant again. If I could overcome cancer and grow my hair back out. If I could eat gluten again. If only my ankle wouldn't swell up every times it storms.
What about the non-physical? How does grief change your life and the life of those around you? Maybe you're been isolated. Lost a job. Lost a child. Maybe you developed a sudden, crippling anxiety that won't let you leave your house. And you wish, you WISH that you could get rid of that problem. Just throw it away. But you can't.
I am afraid of change. At the beginning of this year I told my husband that I could feel this was a year of change, and it scared me. It still scares me. What could possibly be coming? Is it good? Bad? I really don't want it to be a bad change.
Pain is a scary word. We all fear pain, because we know what it can do to us. As Sonya Huber says, our instinct is to avoid pain, because it usually means we're injured or going to be injured. It's natural to run. We run, and when others have to face obvious pain, we avoid conversations, awkward run-ins, etc. Pain is bad. Pain is fear and sickness and injury and death.
But I have news for you. Or maybe not news. We all have pain. We are all suffering, or have suffered. There are things we feel like we just can't deal with. Even this morning, I was so frustrated with my youngest that I was yelling at him for acting sick, when he is, in actuality, sick. Like I was angry that he was sick and couldn't deal with it. Why couldn't I be patient? Loving? Nurturing? I'm embarrassed to admit that I was not. If my kids grow into adults, they're going to be survivors, at least, because they'll have lived through me.
I also talked about miscarriage in one of my earlier posts. It sucks, you guys. And I think sometimes we don't even tell people we're going through them, for the same reasons that we sometimes avoid pain. We don't want to cause pain either. I didn't want to share my pain because I hated feeling like a failure. I hate that I still do. I don't know how to reconcile that. But I do realize things.
I know you live in pain, too. You suffer from depression. You ache all over. You can no longer hear out of one ear. Your vision constitutes legal blindness. You lost your child to the flu. All of these things can feel like your fault, like you did something that caused your suffering. Stop blaming yourself. Bad stuff happens. Crap. Bucketloads of it. You're not alone, you awesome person you. You're still here, you're still going, and you're going to be okay. Even if you have to acknowledge your pain, and that you might never be the person you use to be.
And that sometimes because of the pain, you are more beautiful.
Speaking of the flu, don't you hate it when being sick like that just takes over your life? Whenever I get sick now, it reminds me of morning sickness. I remember thinking, If I could just get over this morning sickness, things will be normal. I didn't try to grasp the idea of living with the morning sickness, and just accepting a new type of life. A different me. Instead, I wanted my old self back.
What about the non-physical? How does grief change your life and the life of those around you? Maybe you're been isolated. Lost a job. Lost a child. Maybe you developed a sudden, crippling anxiety that won't let you leave your house. And you wish, you WISH that you could get rid of that problem. Just throw it away. But you can't.
Pain is a scary word. We all fear pain, because we know what it can do to us. As Sonya Huber says, our instinct is to avoid pain, because it usually means we're injured or going to be injured. It's natural to run. We run, and when others have to face obvious pain, we avoid conversations, awkward run-ins, etc. Pain is bad. Pain is fear and sickness and injury and death.
But I have news for you. Or maybe not news. We all have pain. We are all suffering, or have suffered. There are things we feel like we just can't deal with. Even this morning, I was so frustrated with my youngest that I was yelling at him for acting sick, when he is, in actuality, sick. Like I was angry that he was sick and couldn't deal with it. Why couldn't I be patient? Loving? Nurturing? I'm embarrassed to admit that I was not. If my kids grow into adults, they're going to be survivors, at least, because they'll have lived through me.
I know you live in pain, too. You suffer from depression. You ache all over. You can no longer hear out of one ear. Your vision constitutes legal blindness. You lost your child to the flu. All of these things can feel like your fault, like you did something that caused your suffering. Stop blaming yourself. Bad stuff happens. Crap. Bucketloads of it. You're not alone, you awesome person you. You're still here, you're still going, and you're going to be okay. Even if you have to acknowledge your pain, and that you might never be the person you use to be.
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