The Loopty Loops of Healing

Project 365, Day 88/365

My friends, today, I felt awful. As badly as I felt all those weeks and months ago. I would say it hit me out of the blue, but I felt it brewing last night. After seven months, I still am not sure what triggers my symptoms. But there they were…my collective nemesis. The crippling, get-into-bed-and-hope-for-the-best feeling I lived with day in and day out for far too long.

But if there’s a silver lining in feeling really super crummy all of a sudden, it’s that it highlights how good I have actually felt the past few weeks. And I’m choosing to sit in that gratitude instead of being angry and morose. Today, I have fought back tears every time I let thoughts enter my brain that risk stealing my peace. “Why this again?” “When will this end?” “What did I do to deserve this?” Those phrases and phrases like that bring me to a dark place because I have no answers to those questions. Not a one. One of the first things my acupuncturist said to me on my initial session was when I feel good, even if it’s for one minute or one hour or one day, to stop and hold a place for that in my mind. To physically place my own hands on my body and acknowledge the progress, and try with all my might not to wonder when it will turn for the worse. I gotta tell you, it really helps. That last bit though has been hard. I’m working on it.

So today, I took a similar approach, even though I felt god awful, I stopped, I acknowledged what I was feeling, recited “I am home, I am safe, I am okay,” over and over again to myself, and decided that tomorrow will be another day to feel good. And if not tomorrow, then the next day. I’ve had so many good days in a row lately that I forgot how bad I felt and for how long. Good lord, I felt awful for so long. Our minds are amazing in that we forget pain quickly. Even just the other day, possibly Friday I think, I was floating around the apartment in a nearly fully reclaimed body, and I kid you not, I thought “Wow, I’m forgetting what it felt like to feel bad.” Well…today I was reminded, and it SUCKS.

But if there is anything I’ve learned throughout this whole process is that healing takes time…so much more time than we think. It’s also far from linear. If you’ve ever watched the show “The Good Place,” you might recall the phrase Jeremy Bearimy. Basically, it’s how they explained time moves in the afterlife as compared to the timeline on earth. It loops, it dips, it climbs, it loops some more. It moves forward, it moves backward, and spells out Jeremy Bearimy, with the last “y” circling back around to create the first “j.” It’s a silly little thing from a silly little show (that I love so much so if you’ve never watched it, I highly recommend it), but it’s how I now understand healing to work. It loops, it dips, it climbs, it loops some more. It moves forward, it moves backward. I prefer this analogy to the ever-popular “one step forward, two steps back,” because that’s just freaking depressing. Jeremy Bearimy, okay?

Because while you’re writing out Jeremy Bearimy in the timeline of healing, whatever that healing process is for you (emotional, physical, both), you are still moving. Nothing is worse than being stagnant. My body pain and discomfort were so stagnant for so long, I can tell you, that’s not where you want to be. Every time the process makes a bit of a backward loop, it always feels like you’re in a nosedive. Like you’ll never right the plane and head back up, but you do. You do every single time. And you know how I know that? Because you’re still here. I’m still here. The process makes that backward loop and then it moves to the right to work through the next letter, making progress even if it doesn’t always feel like it. As soon as I fully absorbed this concept, that it would not be a linear arrow from start to finish line, from injury/onset to fully healing, I took immense pressure off myself. There will be no magic bullet for me, just time, hard work, rest and patience.

That’s all I really have to share with you today. I do want to celebrate that I was able to put away three loads of laundry and finally make that banana bread. It took so much internal “I am home, I am safe, I am okay,” chanting to my insides, but I got through it, with plenty of breaks in between. I also want to remind you to be patient and kind to yourself today. For anyone going through something (aren’t we all?), be patient and kind. It’s the only way through. You will get to the other side of it, I will get to the other side of it. It might be a bit Jeremy Bearimy along the way, but we’ll get there.

See you tomorrow, friends.