All Flared Up

For N.G., thank you for reminding me that I have wings.

I am not the me I was before all this began. The grieving process, for the me that used to be, has been punishing. It’s like attending your own funeral even though you are still alive.

At the beginning, I felt completely broken. Like a stranger in my own body. Watching it fall apart from the outside, as if I were a helpless bystander. I wanted desperately to do something to help myself, but was unable to summon the resources.

I’ve been in this body for 54 years. I know every tiny scar and where it came from. I know that I get a sore throat first whenever I get a cold. I know that if I push myself too hard, my back goes out and my knees ache. I know that when I have had a hard day at work, sleep will be evasive.

I also know that if I do get sick, I recover relatively quickly. That if I walk in the morning, the rest of my day feels lighter. That I can manage highly stressful situations with relative ease, but that I need to watch out for the crash later. I know that if I don’t have time alone to recharge, I can be scary to be around. That even after a 12 hour day, I can still rise the next morning and do it again, if necessary.

These were the things I could always count on. The things I took for granted, like statements of fact. The things that started getting stripped from me, one by one.

Just after I started prednisolone for my autoimmune hepatitis, I got sick with a cold. Before I was fully recovered, I was given four vaccines. That pesky cold never went away and I ended up with pneumonia. None of this went down in a way that I could have predicted based on what I thought I knew about my body.

At first, I raged against this. I blamed the doctors. I blamed the vaccines. I blamed myself for not knowing better. And then, when it was all too much to bear, I cried like a small child and her tiny, helpless voice spoke out my fears, “I can’t do this. If this is how it’s going to be, I am not signing up for this.” That night, alone in the hospital, I begged for help without saying a word.

And then something beautiful happened. People showed up. People I hardly knew. People who I’ve known my whole life. People taking my temperature and monitoring my blood work. People I work with. They showed up in ways I have never experienced before, offering listening ears and quiet reassurances. Sitting with me in the hospital even after a strenuous workday. Texting me daily to see how I was.

It was this outpouring of support that finally nudged me towards acceptance. Toward the understanding that a deeply transformative process was underway and that the only choice I had was to stop resisting it. Someone once told me, “It takes a lot more effort to push something away than it does to open your arms, surrender and accept it.”

I am not the me I was before all this began.

I am not yet the me that I am becoming.

But, I am on my way.

My promise to myself is to allow. To get out of my own way so that the transformation can happen unhindered. Everything else will take care of itself. Everyone else will either come along for the ride or not.

There is nothing that needs to be done.

Just breathe and allow.

And spread those beautiful wings.