I thought I was the only one. {Meet my friend}

found here

A lot of unexpectedly good things come about from a health collapse. Trust me. You start to think some unexpected things, change in some unexpected ways, and find that you are drawn to sick people – which you never expected. When you meet a sickie, it’s like meeting a fellow Melbournian in Germany. In that sea of people you find a person who keeps saying, ‘Me too! I know exactly what you’re talking about.’

This particular friendship which I’m going to tell you about began in the kitchen at the flat I was living in during my university days. I was exhausted after a gruelling day of trying-soooo-hard to attend uni and really needing to be in bed. She was visiting someone at the flat, and so we ended up both needing to go to the kitchen for some reason. Now, when you are sick, you really don’t want to meet new people at night in the kitchen. It’s just something you absolutely dread because it will take up so much energy and because you don’t have any, you will go into energy-debt. I’m not sure quite how, but we began to talk, and it come out that neither of us were well. In fact, we were both sick with the same illness, and shared a whole host of common experiences from our ill health. We actually had a most enlivening chat that night. That was the beginning, and now we have a precious understanding of each other’s health, but we have found we have far more than that in common. 

My friend is the kind of person you want to know. She’s a book-reading, tea-drinking, dog-loving, cake-baking, laughing kind of person. You don’t meet her and think, “goodness, she is a tired and sick-of-life person”, which wouldn’t really be surprising after being severely sick for well over a decade. She’s loving, empathetic, generous and hilarious when she could so easily be bitter and depressed. 

I told her that I sometimes struggle with feeling jealous of all the people around me who didn’t get sick; who got to continue with their goals and dreams.

 She fully understood my feelings, but related to me that she didn’t even get to finish secondary school! We laugh and laugh about this, this tragedy. Being unable to finish school could so easily be a touchy and emotional topic for someone with crushed dreams. Despite being bright, talented, and losing the ability to put her life plan into action, she is completely fine with it. Her formal education ended, but she kept on bettering herself.  And now she can giggle about it! And here I am, cut that I didn’t get to finish university. I silently remind myself to get a bit of that perspective, that courageous ability to make lemonade out of lemons.

I love her for having taken this journey to contentment. I know it’s been a journey, because she’s told me about the years where she wasn’t here yet. I don’t think you can ever get sick and immediately go, “Ok, no worries. I’m totally cool with this.” Grieving is the natural process, but it can either continue on and on and produce bitterness, or plant the seeds to a new way of life and contentment. I’ve seen it grow a new life in some people, and the life that I see is fresh, wise, and inspiring. Why do we think that there’s only one way to live, really live?

I have often thought, “I don’t think I could bear to be sick if I had to move back home and hadn’t met Ben.” Or I think, “If I was still as sick as I was when we first got married, I couldn’t keep on keeping going.” But my friend is older than I am, less well than I am, living at home, unable to work...and she’s happy with her life. You can understand why I’m glad to have met her.

She wrote to me, “God has been able to teach me things I never would have been able to hear if I was off living the life I planned, and I am so grateful for that.” 

She says that she focuses on the good, and then the not-so-good becomes less. 

I get to hang out with this person who has learnt about love, empathy, life, and most of all trust. I see how her life has had great value. And when I see that, I start to see more clearly that all the emphasis on life milestones and success are not the whole story. Secondary school followed by degree, followed by vocation followed by family – that’s not the only way to live a worthwhile life. At all. Every set of life experiences and gifts adds a value to the world and fills a role. She’s knows how to care for people, a skill that we need more of in this world. And if her life had gone the way she’d planned, she wouldn’t have been so well equipped to care.

This quote I found here {and it was first written here}. I like the emphasis on living & giving right where you are, rather than pining after the life you had planned. My friend has definitely taught me a lot about that.

“Avoid Comparison-  You are enough.  End of story.  That girl over there… you don’t want her life.  Because you don’t have the grace for it.  You have the grace for yours.  You don’t have her kids, her job, her talents, her hubby, and her network FOR A REASON.  Because you are needed right where you are at.. by Your kids, Your job, Your hubby and YOUR network!  Do what you can, with what you have… right where you are at!  And be grateful..  Always be grateful.  What you are taking for granted, someone else is praying for.”

   

the second step, again

Going downhill after four months of giddyingly good health is not what I would call fun. But neither is it shocking, or acutely devastating {just moderately}. I actually thought my reaction would be more one of catastrophic depression, because I was having such a wonderful time feeling well, and was wondering if I had an addiction to it. But here’s the thing: I feel kind of normal again.

I know this life. This has been my norm, my familiar, my staple for the last few years. I can slot back into this old groove, as challenging as it is. And now I realise, I have adjusted to being unwell and it happened without me even realising.

It was strange feeling so well. I had to pinch myself, to know if it was true. I didn’t feel like me at first.  It was all so surreal, so sparkly. I would burst into tears if I thought about it too much because it was so overwhelmingly ridiculous to feel like that.  And with it came lots of adjustments for me, and for Ben. What to do, if I did get well? I felt this huge responsibility; now you have health, you need to do something really worthwhile. But I had no idea what because I have changed so much. Our home life was different, our housework roles were changing, our social life was changing, our dates were changing – and even when change is beautiful and exciting, you don’t necessarily feel secure. It’s like when you’ve just met someone you really like, and you are in this crazy hyped state of excitement whenever you hear from them, touch them {even accidentally}, talk to them...but it’s not like the stable, comforting closeness of being in a committed relationship with them and knowing them deeply and intimately. Not that being sick is like being in a committed relationship {although I must say, chronic illness is VERY committed to it’s victims}, but that change makes you feel a little uncertain, and tips you out of the groove for a while. 

If most of the things that come with being unwell are nasty, at least there are a couple of pros. One is the comedy of my brain. Most days at the moment we get some serious laughs from the things that my foggy brain verbalises, particularly at night in bed when it’s at its finest. It was a bit boring when I could say what I meant first time. 

And then there is lying on the couch with my dog. It was so odd seeing him lie on the couch while I was up and about, and there is something very precious about his cuddles and his loyalty. Other perks include getting to drink more cups of tea, and....I actually can’t think of anymore pros right now, but the point is, when you find yourself on the second step of the staircase, after having been near the top, at the very least you have been there before and it’s not new and it’s not scary.

And you know that it is possible to be well, and you know that you were loved and comforted last time you were unwell and feeling like a complete mess, so you settle down to hope and wait. 

needing a hole in the ground

I woke up at 9.30 am, next to my dog, who had taken my man’s side of the bed. Today was my day off the gym, and I felt very much inclined to take it easy and embrace relaxation and healing. I decided right then and there that I was going to have a pyjama day. It was the first pyjama day I’d had in months and months. I leisurely spent my morning sewing, writing an email and ignoring the piles of dishes, clothes on the floor and general household chaos. Goodness, I’m good at not doing housework now.

3.00 pm arrived and I felt that great bodily weariness which often surrounds me at this time of day. It didn’t seem wise to push through it considering I’m meant to be look after my health post-move. I decided to snuggle up on the couch for an hour’s recuperation. 

3.24 pm. My eyes are flung open by the distinct sound of people coming up the drive. The first thought that flashes into my mind is, “It’s the Jehovah Witnesses.”

But almost instantly this thought is replaced with another, more accurate, more terrifying one.

“No it’s not. IT’S FRIDAY AFTERNOON, AND THIS IS THE AGENT COME TO SHOW PEOPLE THROUGH THE HOUSE. Craaaaaap.” 

My heart is suddenly pumping like a mad thing, and I feel all shaky and weak and gushing with something they call adrenalin. I am standing up now, in my pink dressing gown, with my overly excited Wolfgang barking like crazy. They are just approaching the porch.

I am not meant to be in the house at all, neither is Wolfgang, and the house is not fit to be seen, and I’m in pyjamas and....

I open the door before the real estate agent gets a chance to unlock it with her keys.

“I am soo sorry! I completely forgot. Can you just give me two minutes?” I say in a manufactured- calm voice, as I just peak my head out of the door in the hopes that she won’t see my pink dressing gown.

She graciously grants my request, and I close the front door as I run full pace into my bedroom, skidding along the wooden floors. The bedroom floor is covered, as always, in my clothes. I tear off my pyjamas and dash on my track pants. I start wildly picking up my clothes and stuffing them under the doona, armful at a time. What can I do, when there is no cupboard to jam them in? It looks so she-just-hid-her-clothes-in-the-bed, so lumpy, so obvious.

The sewing room...well, I just hope with all of me they don’t walk in there, because they will come out with sewing pins stuck in their feet.

I run outside to where Wolfgang is, and in my sweetest voice I coax him into putting on his leash. Then I skid back to the front door, wondering how long my re-dressing and bed-stuffing took. I’m pretty sure it can’t have been more than half a second.  

I open the door again. This time I have opened the door a lot wider as I’m not trying to hide my dressing gown. I glance down with embarrassment to see the cords of my track pants hanging out, just a little reminder of my panicked dressing. I apologise again with genuine I’m-so-sorry tones in my voice, and tell her that I haven’t been well so it quite slipped my mind. She replies that ‘there has been a lot of that going round’ and I gladly take this illusion to my having a virus. Four year virus, what of it.

After all this turmoil she says that the potential buyers have just looked at the backyard and it’s not what they were hoping for. They don’t want to look through the house after all. I close the door.

I’m still flowing with nervous energy. I’m quivering inside, and feeling a big looming dose of anxiety coming my way. I also feel some escalating self-hatred for forgetting an appointment. And then I look at my chalkboard, which this week says, 

“Grace for the things that matter.”

It’s something that I have been thinking about a lot lately. It never works when I say to myself, “It doesn’t matter, don’t worry about it!” Because, all of me disagrees. All of me says, “It does matter!” 

Picture source

What I’m learning is that I cannot be perfect. I can’t remember perfectly, or be the perfect wife, or the perfect host, or flautist, or friend, or writer...and that is ok, because there is grace and understanding, from God, from me, and often from others too. Life is important, and flute, and relationships, and the house, and my arrangements with the real estate agent are important. It’s a lie to say they’re not. But there is grace. So even though they do matter, I don’t have to feel anxious when they don’t go quite right.

There is grace for the things that matter. 

And so I applied some grace to myself, and got over it all faster than I have ever gotten over an embarrassing mistake before. 

punching bags and therapy

I haven’t seen my psychiatrist for a month.

Please understand that this is a really really long time. I miss the lump-in-the-throat rants about things great and small with my unshockable, poker faced shrink. He is a wise old owl. “What’s been on your mind?” he unfailingly asks every week, and I begin to blabber on about anything from carpet stains to the uncomfortably intimate, all in his full confidence. He doesn’t laugh at anything I say, he never blinks an eyelid.

But not only have I been counselling free since just before I left Melbourne, I have also been mood-altering medication free. Right now, I am living life as raw, unrestrained Danielle Skye. I’m sure you can appreciate the difficulties. 

This equation of no medication + no counselling + new city + guests (curious? read this one too) = I needed to hit something by the end of the week. Really hard.  Repeatedly. 

As I’ve said before, when I get anxious, I nearly explode. Implode. Whichever. It’s a peculiar feeling. I tell my husband that I need to punch something. To which he always replies, “You can punch me.” To which I always say, “ No, I don’t want to hurt you.” (And then he privately thinks, “you couldn’t even if you tried.”) On particularly desperate occasions when I have declined his kind offers, the dining room table has suffered, from a rather irrational woman.

picture source

 It would be ideal if I could just run to my psychiatrist every time I was losing it, for he has the most rationalising effect on me. Calmly, firmly, he reminds me that yes, I can say no to people, that yes, I can set boundaries to let myself cope, to recover my health, to foster the stability of my home.

He is now five hours away. Alas. 

I have discovered the most effective solution to this no shrink + no drugs + people issue.

 Bodycombat.

I would advertise this class as just as effective as anti depressants and excellent for sufferers of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD). We need to get it into the DSM manual.

I was nervous before class. These classically trained arms of mine are on the slender side of things and people have bluntly told me that when I am punching something, I don’t look like I’m punching at all. I regret not tuning into the boxing on telly a little more. Shall I admit that my greatest fear was punching myself in the head? It has happened before, in a class. Once I start hurling my twiggy arms around pretty much anything could happen.

Well, I had a ball. I had a wild, ugly, monster kind of a good time. The brutality of the class had me in unstoppable giggles. It was utterly vulgar and rough, and the contrast to my years of ballet training was deliciously stark. Sometimes we were punching men; I assume they were potential assaulters of the opposite sex? “C’MON, make the blood trickle”, yelled out our ‘inspiring’ instructor. I sometimes made Mr. Foe my Trichotillomania or GAD. I put my disorders in a lot of pain. My favourite move, apart from the high ninja kicks, was one where we walked along like beasts, wielding a club from above our heads to the monster we were sleighing on the ground. We were staggering along in a line, swinging wildly, like massive hairy Vikings on a bloody hunt.

 It was violent and uncivilized and I was delighted. Next we ran into a circle and apparently captured some other fiend. There was nothing pretty or polite about this class of middle class girls in designer gym gear. We screamed “YEAH” as we kicked our air opponents you-know-where. I let it all out, all those perfectionist, people-pleasing horrors, which make it so tough for me to care for my body. I served them an almighty blow, and goodness I felt good at the end of class.

A great deal of mental stability came about without me hurting my table, punching my husband, seeing my psych, popping a pill or having a sob. 

Will I be back? 

Yes, for sure.

Oops I mean, HELL YEAH.