I am enough

A year ago, at the start of year two of this jour­ney, I wrote about being grate­ful. I meant every word and still do. I have been ground­ed and hum­bled. The relent­less sup­port from my fam­i­ly and friends, and peo­ple I have nev­er even met, still takes my breath away. My eyes have been opened to pos­si­bil­i­ties in myself and the world around me that I nev­er even imag­ined. It has been dif­fi­cult and it is an ever evolv­ing uphill jour­ney, but I am still grate­ful beyond words.

But now, on the dawn of year three, I’m learn­ing to stretch myself to be both grate­ful and accepting.

I’ve writ­ten about accep­tance before — many times. But I’m start­ing to think that true accep­tance is a con­cept that grows and changes right along with us.

I’ve pur­pose­ly nev­er read any books on life with chron­ic ill­ness, as I made the choice to learn and reflect on my own. How­ev­er, I can imag­ine that much of the lit­er­a­ture has to do with fight­ing and accep­tance. When you are first diag­nosed (or in my case, des­per­ate­ly try­ing to get diag­nosed), your auto­mat­ic reac­tion is to fight, and as well it should be. You spend hours in front of the com­put­er, find the best doc­tors and trav­el all over the coun­try to get third and fourth opin­ions. You are relent­less in your quest to reverse what has hap­pened and return to life as you left it. You go fly­ing into the bat­tle­field, swords flash­ing and fires blaz­ing, and you fight. Good gra­cious, you fight like you have nev­er fought before. Many days the fight seems futile, but you gar­ner every ounce of strength left inside and you persevere.

But at some point, with­out even real­iz­ing it, the bat­tle­fields dis­ap­pear. At some point, the paths become well-worn and your armor is dan­gling, use­less off of your side. At some point, you look around and notice that you are stand­ing alone, with a dilap­i­dat­ed sword at your side.

And that moment, my friends, is where the real heal­ing begins.

You see, accep­tance is not lay­ing down your sword in shame. You have not been defeat­ed. Accep­tance is putting that sword to the side and walk­ing for­ward with your head held high.

My sword is always close by, but I don’t need it now.

I am enough.

Two years lat­er, I know that I will make progress and then I will relapse. Many times. But now I know that I will learn some­thing each time. I will learn what my body needs and how best to let it heal. Our bod­ies will always tell us what they need, but we have to be will­ing and mind­ful enough to lis­ten. A few weeks ago, I wrote about a relapse so swift and so pow­er­ful, that it knocked the wind out of both my body and my spir­it. From that I learned that it’s ok to feel defeat­ed and ask for help. It does­n’t make me weak or unwor­thy to lean on my friends and fam­i­ly for support.

I am enough.

I now go entire weeks with­out a vis­it to any sort of doc­tor — a con­cept which would have seemed pre­pos­ter­ous if you had asked me a year ago. Espe­cial­ly pre­pos­ter­ous see­ing as med­ical­ly speak­ing, not much has changed. You see, I’ve noticed that life with chron­ic ill­ness is a lot like teach­ing. The first year is absolute may­hem and pure exhaus­tion. You spend the entire year in sur­vival mode and col­lapse in a heap on a reg­u­lar basis. The sec­ond year is still crazy and chaot­ic, but your feet are start­ing to find the ground. Then there is that glo­ri­ous third year. The year where you final­ly feel like you may actu­al­ly know what you are talk­ing about. There will always be sur­pris­es and every day is still an adven­ture, but for the most part you can start to breathe.

So now, as I embark upon year three, my sword is close by, but I know I don’t need it. There will be progress. There will be relaps­es. There will be days where I am frus­trat­ed and days where I feel strong. There will be days when I need sup­port and days when I can stand on my own, and that’s ok.

I have fought a good fight.

I have laid down my sword.

I am enough.