Chronic Diva

Other Wistful-cisms…and Conclusions

I want my old brain back. You know the one I’m talking about. The one that could remember an entire grocery list on her own. The one that didn’t need to write everything on post-it notes or List-App’s on the phone or computer. The brain that made me a pretty successful mother of four small children, under the age of 5 and then when they got older: returned to school and later on, returned to work as well. There was a lot of juggling going on and I was managing alright. Looking back on it now, what I saw as overwhelming was stressful, but not as overwhelming as it would be for me now. It amazes me the volume of information I could store in my memory without needing to write it down. Entire lectures got banked up there with little need to study. I could remember my medication (for the few I took) without needing to write it down or needing an alarm on my phone. I stored in my brain at least five family and friend’s numbers and now I can only manage my husband, the rest are in contacts on my phone. Some of this can be attributed to getting older, and our lives stored on our phone, while others are truly a memory issue that is a direct result of my autoimmune disorders. Many of us are familiar with brain fog; this is like brain fog on steroids that can be positively alarming.

The clarity is gone. The crystalline keenness in which I had been so accustomed to seeing things had now dissolved into feathered edges that forced me to squint. It makes me angry and frustrated and deeply sad because everything that I want to do well, like sitting down to write, which I love, is twice as hard. Words don’t just fire off the synapses like they once used to. It feels as though they are blanketed in a thick, low fog and I have to search for the words, sometimes using Google, or the Thesaurus like a fishing rod, several times to hook and reel the right words I am searching for. There are times I will slam the laptop shut, frustrated that this is how things have turned out. Frustrated that this is my calling and that the universe has seen fit to throw in another challenge as if life itself weren’t challenging enough. But I refuse to allow it to rob, what it is I love. If I just lay down and die, it wins. I’m sorry, but if there’s one thing that people with chronic illness have in reserve is strength.

I want my health back. I’d settle for my health at my 30’s. I had migraines every few days but now, when I get a migraine on top of everything else that makes my body feel like someone’s punching bag, it makes me feel one hundred times worse. I want the freedom of being able to eat what I want and not have to worry about it making me sick to my stomach. You forget about how food makes you feel; you forget your vanity and about the calories because you’re losing weight from the terror waged every day in your digestive system and all you want to do is enjoy food for the sheer sake of pleasure because food has now become your Moriarty. Worse than that because you can thwart your nemesis, but you can’t thwart food. Food is life.

I miss my old body and freedom of travel. I want the luxury of being able to travel whenever and wherever I want and not have to take into consideration my illnesses and how travel will impact my body or how the stress of everything will tire me out or be too painful for me. I want my 20’s and my 30’s when I could run and jump and climb and do yoga. I wake up in the morning and the first thing that greets me is pain. There are different levels of pain: some is throbbing and aching in my joints and muscles, while others radiate and spike down from my lower back down my leg. It’s not something I get used to and I have to breathe a little humour into it, thinking, “Well, if I ever wake up and not feel pain, I know I’m dead.” A little dark humour, but that isn’t anything new with me. People would probably find it surprising to hear that I would like to go out more. I am most comfortable in my house, given my anxieties, but there is still an explorer in me. However, because I feel fragile and I’m afraid of unknown terrain hurting me, I distrust going out. Hence, missing my old body and freedom of travel.

I miss unfettered laughter, a quiet mind, a carefree spirit. Did I ever have these things? I’m 45 years old and when looking back on my life and grasping at memories of my childhood and teenage years and older I wonder if I ever did truly have these things. Was I shaped by a bipolar mind with anxiety? The PTSD is a condition that was developed, but surely, I was a clean slate at some point? But the truth is, I don’t think the slate was ever clean. And still, I would take it over some days now, because I can taste the levity on my tongue; the sweetness of it and recall the serenity and carefree spirit that allowed me to take chances I don’t think I could take now. Mental illness paints things a shade darker. Creates shadows where there aren’t any or ought not to be any.  I can briefly grasp at what was during manic episodes, but it’s never right. They’re either pale comparisons or too bright and too clean. Like I jumped into Wonderland. I wonder what it’s like to be in a normal head and experience emotions normally and not acutely because as I miss the unfettered laughter and quiet mind, I also miss the natural ability to arbitrate emotion. Instead, I feel with every atom of my being- every pore. I love with every ounce and feel with every tear, those losses that may be minuscule to someone else, are devastating to me every time, taking a bit of me with them.

I want my old brain back, and my old body back and- but I always stop. Because whining about it and venting about it is different than actually getting it back. It’s necessary to do. After all, you have to grieve what you’ve lost, because in a very real way you have lost a part of yourself, but in another way you’ve gained a different part of yourself and that is the part, I’m not willing to let go of, as much as I might complain. Why?

Because my chronic illness, while being a pain in the ass 99% of the time has taught me three very important things: Being Compassionate toward others, Listening without Judgment, Living Life Despite The Pain. It’s pretty simple and while I could probably add more things, these are pretty much the foundations by which I try to live my life. It’s not always easy; I’m not a saint, but I try. Compassion is not something I find difficult, especially when encountering so many who find it difficult to be compassionate toward me. I’m already naturally empathetic. Listening is almost as easy, but listening without trying to interject opinions or thoughts and just listening to a person is more difficult. People often want to speak about how they relate to a person’s situation, or how they would deal with it, or how they feel about it. The keywords here being they/themselves. Listening and focusing on them, and not yourself is more difficult. It is something I work on every day- not making it about me. Living Life Despite Pain, of just Living my Best Life is strange, the most difficult. My life has been focused around my family- my husband and four kids and learning how to live life in a way where it also makes me happy- where I am doing things so that I thrive as well, feels selfish. But we need to make the most of every day we are living on this earth, so that is what I am working on.

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