Nine months ago yesterday I hung up the steroid ointments and immunosuppressants and began the grueling journey of topical steroid withdrawal, a journey toward freedom and real health. Showering and moisturizing is a task so simple and routine that most of you do it without thought, your mind drifting elsewhere, planning and organizing your day. But for me, cleaning my body is a daily ritual of pain. Proper treatment of a full body flare is intense. I had to let out a primal scream today to deal with the agony of slathering vitamin cream over my body. A wave of itchy, stinging rawness washes over me day in and day out. The overpowering pain is matched only by the subtle dread during moments of calm, like a spectre watching me from afar, reminding me that its only a matter of time. And yet, time is all we ever have. As the Buddha taught, life is suffering and non-suffering. Life is both joy and pain, and despite feeling freed by one and persecuted by the other, they are two halves of one whole, unable to exist separately. In this way we walk our paths in an ebb and flow, pushed and pulled, our passions ignited by each - life cannot be quantified subjectively as either good or bad - in our most honest moments, when we really connect with ourselves and stop being angry, what we feel is joyous pain, agonizing beauty. And that is what this journey has taught me. I live inside a body that wont calm down, and in my worst moments I feel like a prisoner inside of myself. I live in constant reminding that my body has been ravaged by pharmaceutical drug use and that there is no way to know when I will get well, if ever. But when I finally left my terror behind and connected to my anger, my sadness and my unending restlessness, they dissolved in a cathartic, bittersweet bliss, washed away like a whirlpool. My pain has been my guide, tenderly pushing me to open my eyes and live a life of love, and that there is no force in this universe more powerful than my desire to give and receive love. I cannot choose to feel well; instead I will choose to be well. Happy Thursday. I love you all.
Posted on: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 16:02:48 +0000
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