Tomorrow is the second anniversary of my first hospitalization and since anniversaries are significant, I haven't been able to think of little else this weekend. I have been grieving my old like, my pre-disability life horribly; I miss bending over to get something out of the cabinets, walking in a straight line, etc. Lately, when I think about those early days, I am gripped with horror.
Before CIDP, I lived my life swinging from pollyanna to panic. I spent half of my life telling myself that I would be lucky and escape the tumult and turmoil others had. When I wasn't telling myself that, I was paranoid, crippled with fear that the opposite would turn be true.
While reading a friend's blog about her traumatic experience, I realized that we shared something. We are survivors. I am really uncomfortable with the word survivor. It makes me think about new developments are often named after what they replaced, Deerfield Drive Through, or The Oak Park Shopping Mall, "Please, God, "I would pray, "don't make me a survivor. I don't want to brave or an example or any of that hard stuff."
Today, Emily wrote, "Sorry to say, I don’t have any ‘what doesn't kill you will make you stronger’ or ‘everything happens for a reason’ platitudes to slap onto the end of this post to reassure readers " and I concur.
What didn't kill me left me weakened and wounded, certainly not stronger. Nor did it leave me wiser, in that sense of cosmic, universal wisdom and clarity that people expect; other than this: we live in a broken world. Bad things happen, if not to you personally, then to others you are close to, and lives in lived in peace and harmony can become wreckage strewn messes with frightening speed. God didn't protect me from illness and God didn't save Natasha's life.
But I guess that is something.
testing
ReplyDeleteI do remember that March was the anniversary of when you became so terribly sick two years ago. Your sickness is beyond all platitudes. It scared the hell out of me; I was so afraid for you. I had no idea what to say to you about it. I still don't, other than 'it's not fair' which is juvenile. Of course terrible things happen and none of us are immune. I used to think (truly and not too long ago, either) that because of what I had suffered as a child, I would be magically immune to physical illness in my life. (What a load of crap.) If anything, suffering does make us wiser in that it forces us to take a step back and see ourselves as 'just another human' who has 'survived' a traumatic event.
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