5/21/2021
Yesterday I came across some writing I did in 2015. I was in the thick of my relapse at that time. When I read it I was immediately transported back to that place in time. I remember it all so clearly; being so weak that I showered once every 7 days if I was lucky. Showering would be so deeply exhausting for my body, and I didn’t have the energy to do it more often, even with a shower chair and my mom washing my hair. Sometimes my mom would just have to bathe me in my bed because that’s the best I could manage. I remember being hooked up to IV’s all the damn time, and hearing them beep and flash all hours of the night. That sound of the IV pump is one that will never ever leave my brain. I remember days that turned into weeks where I couldn’t stomach any food and I survived on homemade shakes that were barely 400 calories, praying I wouldn’t find myself in the hospital for a feeding tube. I remember my nervous system being so overwhelmed that I would shake like a leaf for days on end while my heart raced at 120 mph lying flat. I remember pain so intense I would try to scream but nothing would come out because I was too weak to make sounds after days of the pain ravaging my body. I remember the tears of pure desperation, thinking that I couldn’t possibly take any more. And yet, somehow I did. I took 5 more years of that and more in an unrelenting fashion.
These moments weren’t anomalies; they were all of it. The time fighting my illness wasn’t spent lying in bed napping and having a good time. It was spent fighting pain that stretched what I believed the human body could take. I had two boards in my room that tracked all of the daily meds I had to take. One of the things we tracked was my ‘activity’ levels. If I managed to walk down the stairs my mom would write “Christina made it downstairs!!!” with a giant star. I still have those papers to this day, and I can see that those moments happened sometimes only once a month, if not less. Most years I would find it to be an accomplishment if I stepped outside of the house once per season. Me actually making it out to the deck just to sit was seen as something worth popping champagne over.
Sometimes those moments feel a million miles away. Other times they come flooding in and knock me off my feet. I do not know how I endured, I really don’t. But I am starting to think I borrowed a lot of mental brainpower from the future to achieve it. Because as I am trying to rebuild my life now I realize that the trauma of being stuck in that state for so long still haunts me. I am afraid of so many things, because I see much of the world a threat to my current healed state. I can’t go back to that place again, I know I will not survive it. Although I am much better now, I fear that missteps and bad choices can undo my work.
So where does that even put me? I don’t know. Some days are harder to contend with it, but other days I do a better job. Mentally it’s a moving target that darts around between the two extremes, and where it will land is anyone’s guess. But I am so grateful for the people in my life who get it. Who have my back and know that I’m trying my best each day, whatever that looks like. I’ve spent so long healing physically that it never occurred to me that I need to heal mentally too.
-Christina
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