Standing on my patio last night watching the sun setting gave me a flurry of emotions. I could go into details of the sentimental thoughts that crossed my mind, the ones that brought tears to my eyes- both of happiness and sadness- but instead I want to focus on the sense of balance that watching the sun go down and fade into darkness gave me.
I haven't written anything on this blog for a while. Things got a little dark for me I suppose. Flare up doesn't even begin to describe some of the intense symptoms of pain and fatigue I have been feeling. The inability to get the energy up to even leave my bed for more than 15 or 20 minutes at a time, for a maximum of about 3 times a day. Total social seclusion for days on end. The only tie to other people being the constant stream of posts and updates that come in through facebook, instagram and snapchat. Say what you will, but honestly, thank god for snapchat. anyways, that was a bit of a tangent. back to the sunset.
Standing there, watching the sun go down and fade into the darkness really made me feel like I have been sitting on that side of a days rotation for weeks, months. And yes, sunsets are beautiful. Sunsets can be extremely happy times. I'm not one to turn down the chance to sit somewhere lovely, watching the sun go down, surrounded by people I love, potentially with a glass of wine in hand. It's the thing that comes after the sun finally does set that is important here. The darkness. You could almost call in the absence of life. You don't hear birds chirping, kids playing, or just the standard background bustle of people moving about. That is really where my head and my body have been at lately. And it's actually fairly easy to settle into the darkness, despite what many may think. And being a nurse who is used to shift work, it's easy to keep the darkness all day long. Just pull the blackout blind down to shut out the light and the rest of the world.
I know this all sounds rather dreary and sad. At times it was, for sure. No denying that. But I think I really believe in darkness as a healthy part of healing and recovery. I'd fallen into a pit of hopelessness for my symptoms improving. A pit of hopelessness for my life ever being something more than just month after month of medication changes, blood tests ( I actually had a lab tech tell me I broke her record for most vials drawn in one visit. Can you feel my joy?) and visits to various doctors offices, with many uncomfortable tests to be done. And hopelessness is kind of easy too, you know? It sounds hard, and it's definitely not all sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, but it comes easily. Fighting is the hard part.
So, once again, standing on my patio last night, watching the sun go down, I started to think about the sun rising again, instead of just the darkness that rests in between. ( Unless of course you're lucky enough to get to experience the midnight sun of northern places). But really. The world has this funny way of rotating and moving and changing, and in the end, the sun always rises again the next day. So I'm going to focus on that for a while. I'm going to choose to fight for the possibilities. I'm going to choose to believe my doctor when she gave me a hug yesterday and said, very pointedly, "this is not your life, this is not your forever."
So, there it is. The sun rose this morning and so did I. I got up, got out of bed, made myself some tea, some breakfast, cleaned up my garden, bonded with my roommate, and started to fight for better, for more, for different. I hope you'll fight with me.
How did you enjoy the intense over used metaphors in this post?
I sure had fun. Cliches all the way.
