Year 2013

What have I done this year?  I hope it was a lot, since I haven't posted on here in almost a year.  This year, I finally, truthfully, began forgiving my body for not working the way it used to.  Pain has chosen to stay, and I have chosen to live with it, instead of make it my enemy, I choose peace.  I choose to embrace my life, the beautiful people in it, and not give in to the deep depression that has seemed like such a prison for the last few years.  It's amazing to me how I have felt for so long that I was doing fine; I was taking care of my family as best as I know how, raising happy, healthy children and keeping house as good as anyone...but I have been so paralyzed inside.  By pain, by fear, by how deeply sad I have been over several big losses in a few short years.  I've always tried to be brave, I've smiled through pain and tears and poverty, death and divorce.  But I never just said, "enough."  I need to breathe.  I need to clear my mind.  Just like I swept my floor each night after tucking my babies into bed, I neatly swept the pain and thoughts of failure away, focusing on what I love and what makes me happy, pushing away what terrified me to face.  What many people who have experienced pain (and that is the majority of us, to some degree) is that it doesn't just go away on its own sometimes.  The void gets bigger.  These feelings NEED, they DEMAND, to be acknowledged.  And they will continue to brew, the thoughts will cut into your peace, until you take the time to look at them and honestly FEEL what you've hidden away from yourself.  Agonizing.  But at the same time, I have found more peace in the past year than I had convinced myself I had found already several years ago!  How is that??  I STOPPED LYING to myself about how I was doing, to my family, to everyone.  Never again would I automatically say "I'm good!"  every time someone asked me how I was.  Not when I wanted to scream "I'm not OK!  I'm in pain!  I'm terrified I won't be able to work again!  I can't feel my arm today!  I couldn't wash the dishes today because of my neck pain!"  That doesn't mean I went around moping and telling the world my problems...most people don't know what I deal with on any given day unless they know me well.  But I would think to myself, "How AM I doing?"  I'd hold onto the first word that came into my head, and even if I smiled and replied "I'm good!  How are you?"  that one word would roll around until I had discovered why it came to mind, and what was I going to do about it?  Meditation.  Loving and forgiving my body for hurting.  Visualizing love in the places where pain has seemed to take hold.  This does not mean my pain has miraculously been cured, or that I no longer have days where I rule my house from atop the mountain of orthopedic devices and pillows and heating pads and ice heaped onto my bed; I do.  But I always rule.  I always love.  I always wake up the next day to some kind of change.  I have a choice.  I choose love.