I read the post below, and I think about it. It seems remarkable to me that many folks don't realize the limitations on their actions when their health is gone. I've always felt more limited by my health than anything-- it's almost an OCD thing for me, trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with me and why I can't have that same freedom as everyone else. Here's what I reflect:
The drive from Athens to Atlanta seemed long at the time, and longer when I considered that I was completely immobile once I got out of the car. It was stupid, really. One day I'm running along, shivering in the February morning, and the next I've got searing pain in my ass anytime I try to move. I'd tried everything-- hot baths, massage, e-stim, no exercises, running through the pain, swimming, everything. On the road, a billboard, and on it, a picture of an old man in a wheelchair with a grandson tenderly poking him in the face. Big white letters proclaimed "You don't have to live in pain."
You don't HAVE to live in pain. But what about when life and pain go hand in hand? I was a runner then, fit and active, which is completely different than being happy and healthy. I could run for two hours per day on one meal in the evenings. The world was regimented. When my body ached, I pressed through it, until I was too sick to run, then I took to bed hard until I got better. There was no middle ground, and so it was always a flux of sickness and activity, one or the other. It was 100% on or 100% off, and at no time did I ever feel like I was in good health as I was in high school, when I could wake up every day and blaze through the streets, and fight men 2 or 3 times my size. Quite often I would think walking through the downtown of Athens, if a car was coming at me right now, I couldn't possibly run away from it. But put a timer in a coaches hand and my scholarship papers in the other and I was on fire.
When I dislocated my SI joint I was lost. I literally could not run. My ass would burn from my shoulders to my feet. It had crushed my sciatic nerve and any motion hurt. They shot me in the ass with corticoids, powerful steroids to make me numb. When I was numb, I could run. They wore off at about seven PM and I was immobile until the next morning at 5 when we practiced first. We were greyhounds, expendable dogs. What mattered was "could I run a 17:00 5k?" not that getting into the car caused me to scream with pain. I bit my lips not to wake up my neighbors. I drove 200 feet so that I wouldn't have to walk, because I couldn't make it. I laid down in elevators. They shot me every day, a direct needle between the joints of my back and butt. It hurt like hell. It was a like a spinal tap every morning and afternoon. It didn't get better. I saw that old man sign, and I was mad, who was that man to say I didn't have to live in pain. I was doing everything right, and the pain got worse and worse.
With time, and lack of patience, the pain subsided, only to be replaced by some other pain. If it wasn't my ass, it was my knees, and if not knees, feet, or shins. As I got older, and sicker, and out of school, it became more serious. My intestines didn't work. My pancreas doesn't work. My kidneys don't work. Everything I chose to do lead me to pain, and was it all my fault? Yes.
It isn't cool, or fair, to be 25 years old and sometimes your eyelids are so swollen you can't open them in the morning. Some days you feel fine and the next days your legs are filled with so much water that when you press them it makes dents. You think to yourself, I'm supposed to be young and healthy, but I've abused my body so much, now I've got chronic pain. It just plain sucks. Your mind burns with questions at simple choices-- every decision is an ultimatum. Wouldn't it be great to be able to make normal choices without painful consequences? Let me exemplify: for me, the decision of "should I eat this bit of blackberries?" is not "do I want blackberries?" but "am I willing to sacrifice feeling stable for having a huge blood sugar rush, a stomachache, and swelling in my hands so much that my rings cut into my fingers for blackberries?" I mean, for god's sake, it's just a piece of fruit. Or to exercise, the question "do I want to go for a run, get in a bit of better shape and tone myself, and enjoy the dark morning" becomes "am I willing to trudge along, dragging my legs that always feel like anvils across creaking joints all over my body, just for the sake of trying to have 1/5 of what a normal person's metabolism might be like?" And then the worst part, you realize that 4 years of stubborness and a free ride to college with a few thousand dollars to spare that you chose is the reason for all this pain. I would ask, was it worth it, but it wasn't. It was a complete waste of time, for the sake of fitting into what others wanted me to be, and what I could afford.
I think that the caged bird is more cognizant of the vast openness of the sky than the free falcon. You dream, everyday, that you can fly. You seek out cures, remedies, anything, a new way of life, studies showing that it works, something to get to that blueness. Sometimes you take a risk, and always it fails. Time brings relief, but anxiety that something more will happen.
I read that people don't realize the limitations on their health until it's gone, and I think, hell, I learned that lesson when I was eighteen years old, when mine left. There's a giant life ahead of me yet. I am your subject, old wise ones. Imagine that you have that knowledge young, what do you do? Where do you go when you view realizing and honoring your dreams in light of the fact that you have lost a powerful tool for that end?
You reflect, conditionally. What if I hadn't listened? I was told to wear certain clothes and feel happy in certain situations; my brain literally cannot do this. It doesn't behave correctly to do this-- when I see my skin exposed it agonizes me. I look in the mirror, and it agonizes me. People tell me to just make the choices anyway. I struggle against myself and I do it, just like I ran through pain to chase a scholarship, and I find it only makes the situation worse. The mind is ill and not tending to the illness makes it sicker. I am not everyone else. People say, become a great athlete, and the training I was given caused me to not only fail at that dream, but to become significantly less atheltic than I was before. Again, some people may train themselves fit, but I am not everyone else. All it should have taken from me is a "no! that's not for me, it doesn't work like that for me, this makes me ill"-- but for some reason getting turned around and following what most think is true is easier than forging a path.
You speak from experience. I think it's true that we all have our own dreams and methods of achieving them. To young people everywhere I encourage that you explore the world and yourself without fear of social conviction. Become comfortable with yourself and with being with yourself. Learn to say "no" and realize that people who love you won't hate you for doing it. Don't accept a lot of responsibility. Spend your afternoon outside and sometimes, eat ice cream for dinner. Don't go to a church that makes you dress up. Or dress up, if you like doing so, for a soccer game. Most importantly, do things that make you feel good. When you have to make a hard choice and money is a driving factor, remember that money isn't happiness.It certainly can buy nice toys, but in the end it's better to feel good and take out a loan so that you can live in the mountains and buy your food at WINCO than to be completely sick and miserable, but be able to afford premium cable and sushi dinner.
Here it is. To the living, I say, learn to be brave, and be yourself. Learn to be brave about being yourself. Remember that people are each different, and that everyone is struggling with something. Everyone around you is hurting in some way, and it's not the same way that you hurt. Be compassionate. Don't argue or blame people for wanting attention-- of course they want attention-- so give it to them in the form of love and sympathy. To the dying, you are right. Reflect and know you are special and significant not for what you think now, but how you lived and loved, and mostly, how you took care of yourself during your life. May all have the grace (rather than the misfortune) to realize and embrace their own frailty.
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