Grass Still Grows in Tough Terrain

The pain seems to be taking over. It fizzes and pops and pulsates across the top of your head, behind your eyes: in your temple, your jaw, your neck. Nausea ebbs and flows, leaving waves of heavy fatigue in its wake. You wonder, is this it? Is this your life now? How long has it been? Time loses shape as hours and more hours pass, you drift in and out of some kind of sleep, occasional unconsciousness the only thing to bring relief.

At some points you ask yourself, how do I know this is okay? When did I learn that this was okay? Sometimes it feels so, so bad that you wonder if you might not wake up. You wonder if you were in public, would someone call an ambulance? (Although you have been in public, vomiting so hard you pee yourself, unable to walk straight for the pain, and no one has batted an eye.)

You have known fear. The fear that you’ll pass out and choke on your own vomit. The fear that descends when you’ve woken up on the bathroom floor after laying your head for just a moment, unsure of when or where you are. When you have to crawl up the stairs because the pain is so heavy it’s pushing your whole body down, sapping your muscles. When your heart seems to be jumping out of your chest, thumping wildly, erratically. And there’s that less specific fear too, a rising, general and very real panic.

And when that subsides, the sadness takes over. The grief. And then, the berating of yourself for being dramatic. Other people have real problems, you think. Stop whining.

But you have a real problem. You have a disabling neurological condition. Just because no one can see it, it doesn’t mean it’s not there. Just because you can power through, or when you can’t you just say that you’re ‘not well’ so the extent of is unknown and unrecognised, none of this means that this illness hasn’t impacted you, that it hasn’t stolen from you, that it hasn’t ravaged your body and shrunk your world.

It has. You are not who you were. You have lost a lot to this illness. You are navigating new terrain. You didn’t expect to be a chronically ill person. You don’t see yourself as someone who goes to hospital for treatment; even when you’re there, you feel weird and out of place and like maybe you’re taking space from someone who really needs it.

But you are that person. You need it.

This new terrain is tough. You don’t have a map, you weren’t prepared. But listen, you are doing okay. You are doing okay.

And as you lie there, in a world where it seems pain and nausea and dizziness and despair are all that exist, a soft, summer breeze will seep in through the window. It will brush your skin and bring with it gentle birdsong, the distant sound of a mower.

Tomorrow, it will start to lift. You’ll go outside for some air. Your bare feet will press into the warm grass. You’ll feel the sun on your face. You’ll hear a flutter and you’ll look up and see a little blue tit at the bird feeder you put up all those months ago. Remember when you bought fifty fatballs even though you’d not had a single bird in the garden? But you put them out anyway, and when they went uneaten and dried out you put out new ones? Because you had hope. And tomorrow, tomorrow you’ll see that little blue tit pecking at them, and when you look more closely, you’ll see there are only four and a half balls now, not six. And you’ll sit back on your little bench and you’ll see bumblebees tumbling about in the wind, on the cotoneaster, among the lupins, hiding in the poppy blooms that have appeared out of nowhere.

And beyond the fence there will be groaning traffic and shouting children and barking dogs and in the sky, the clouds will pass across the sun and the air will cool and drops will fall and you’ll pull down your cap and put on your headphones and press play and you will smile and think, I am doing okay. I am doing okay.