There has been so much to say in recent weeks, but life has twisted and turned so drastically inside of me that the way I feel about things has rarely remained consistent in moments that I would take to write about something. Although the bigger picture seems as calm and placid as a personal pond, the tide-effect feels more like I am an ant braving a lonesome cross-pond journey on a leaf that seems to drive itself continuously out of control in spin-like motions with the slightest interruption, yet on slightly breezy days filled with rays of sunshine, I feel healed, hopeful, and energetic as though I am truly getting somewhere even if I have no real shore in sight.
If anything over these last few months, I’ve had these two perspectives – the pond and the magnified ripples – reminding me just how small I am in this world. I have felt incredibly insignificant and I have felt transpired and warmed by a gratitude that is relaxing and safe. Although I have had no idea where I have been going and at times I have let the lack of ability/control nearly sink me into non-existence as I have had to find patience with myself and humility in being able to share parts of myself in asking help of others that I have never done before in spending months of being unable to move, unable to do, unable to go, unable to think, unable to stay awake, unable to be myself at any percentage that I am used to or have lived confident and proud of all of my life. And now, here I am, establishing a relationship without this confidence and still, somehow, knowing who I am without any ability to prove it. I have no literal ability to stand for myself, to show off… anything. All I can do is sleep or sit and talk. This has been anything but an adventure.
Challenge after challenge; trust and various tests of strength – I let everything in. JM pumped me full of medications every few hours for the first few weeks. Between him and my sister, every other day one of them carried me into the bath and carefully washed me until my shoulder healed, my elbow began to bend again, and my fingers eventually grew back into place so I could begin to wash myself.
JM would prop me up at night so I could sleep, put his arm around me or underneath me and let me slumber away at the expense of his own comfortability. He would get me my own blanket and handfuls of pillows to prop my leg on. He’d craddle me with worry every time I would cry, no matter how many times I would fall apart over the lack of capability that I had and if I would ever have the ability to walk normally again, do yoga like I use to, play the piano, type normally, regain energy, or thought. He went through disgusting processes and painful streams of tears as I whimpered through dressing my wounds time and time again. He took me to and from my doctor and sat hours through my surgery, signing away his responsibility for life or death which I genuinely feared as my blood pressure refused to rise until the very last minute.
My sister came every week – once or twice – with snacks, food, and various things I needed from home since I couldn’t venture out of JM’s “tower” where he claimed to have “kidnapped” me to his keeping. She visited and brought my oldest sister with her at times. She always was there to make sure I was ok. My Dad came after surgery and helped me to physical therapy recently, impressed by how far I have come and touched by my genuine choice to have him help me through this.
Despite the rolling tides, the winds, and the spinning direction – the bigger picture may have a circular shore that all seems to harbor similar destinations and a feeling that projects a lack of purpose for ever venturing out to begin with, but I am someone who believes that everything has a time, a place, and a purpose. I have never been one to let anyone into my life to help me and therefore, to me, it is inevitable that something like this would happen – where I would have to learn the lessons of asking for help. I have never been one to stop working, to take a vacation that was not also “high speed” and to have patience with silence or be ok with “the way things are” – therefore it would also be inevitable that I should be forced to learn patience and confidence with myself after losing everything I have “defined” myself by. In many ways I have been forced to rebuild. In many ways, I have lost nothing so rebuilding is only going to make me that much stronger. In many ways, for having gone nowhere in a literal since, I have moved further along in my life towards making so many of my dreams a reality than I ever have before. This is both exciting and incredibly uncomfortable. These are lessons as unnerving to human nature as learning to walk again as we grow old with the idea of what we could have done and what we wanted to do more easily than telling the stories of where we’ve been. One sounds so much more enchanting than the other, all the what if’s come with so much more reassurance and less self-centeredness than the ideas of “look what I did.” And yet it’s time… I have had more support and trust of those who surround me in my life than I ever have before. I feel like I can really take a solid dive into becoming everything I’ve ever been as well as everything I could be.
Friday the 13th… was the luckiest day of my life which has lead to so many more Lucky 13′s. Everything happens for a reason. You never know where things lead you, even at 50 mph… 
Filed under: Daily Life, Relationships, Self Healing, gratitude
