Alone on the Corner of Hope and Despair
Alone on the Corner of Hope and Despair
On a cold February night in 2013, I was tested like never before. Would I pass?
Author’s note: This story involves falling. I realize this is an uncomfortable topic for many, so let this serve as a heads-up.
This is also a long post, so it might take a couple sessions to read!
As soon as I finished counting the days, I knew I had jinxed myself.
But in my defense, for the first time in forever, I felt optimistic. Hopeful, even. Over the previous month, my disease progression had stabilized. Maybe, I thought, my lifestyle adjustments were beginning to take effect.
Optimism was a strange feeling. It was out of character with my demeanor, but on this night, I had a good reason to feel buoyant. My joints, which usually ached, were uncharacteristically pain-free. I was even moving around easier, which never happened anymore.
My good fortune made me think back to the night of my last fall. As I waited at my desk for rush hour in Boston to come to an end, I clicked on the calendar icon on the bottom left of my Macbook screen. The icon showed the date - Thursday, February 7, 2013 - but I wanted to see the full-month view. I clicked until the calendar for January appeared.
I knew my last fall occurred on January 11th, so I counted up from that day. Twenty-seven days.
Twenty-seven. That has to be a record.
It was certainly the longest streak without falling in several months. It might even have been the longest since my first fall on September 10, 2011.
I knew better than to take the streak for granted; hubris had gotten the best of me before and I was not going to make that mistake again. Nonetheless, just counting the days triggered a mental tripwire.
You are going to jinx it, you idiot.
But what if my optimism was warranted? I knew that nothing could stop my disease - a rare form of limb-girdle muscular dystrophy - from ravaging my muscle cells. I only had so much muscle left to lose. But what if I could slow the progression down to a crawl? Deep down, I believed it was possible.
For more than a year, I had taken meticulous notes on my food intake and daily exercise. I recorded the day’s weather, how limber I felt when I woke up in the morning, and the heaviness of my backpack. (A full Tupperware container of lasagna was a no-no.) I even recorded what I wore, so I could optimize the number of layers to maximize both range of motion and warmth. I analyzed these notes and planned my day down to the smallest detail, taking into account every factor I could think of and making whatever adjustments were necessary to keep me upright throughout the day.
As I let the number twenty-seven sink in, I heard a familiar sound in the office kitchen around the corner. I perked up. Someone was cracking open a beer bottle. It was after 6:30, well within the normal timeframe for someone to have a cold one before taking the train home. Sometimes that person was me.
I got up from my desk and headed to the kitchen. There were only a few employees left in the office, mostly computer engineers. I worked at a small tech company in downtown Boston, near the main train station, so there was almost always someone in the office - even at late hours - implementing a software update, monitoring the computer systems, or because they missed the last train and had to stay the night.
I walked into the kitchen and it was Christmas day: beer AND food. An engineer who was tearing off slices of pepperoni pizza told me to help myself, and I obliged. I grabbed a couple slices of cheese and plopped down at one of the kitchen tables. By this point, a few other engineers, drawn to the aroma, had found their way into the kitchen. It looked like I was going to be here a bit longer than I expected.
“Beer?” One of the engineers held a bottle of something dark in his hand. I didn’t recognize the logo or the golden label.
“Definitely.” I was originally going to say no but I was in a good mood. I deserved a beer.
The laws of my disease were immutable; it was up to me whether or not to obey them.
He handed me the bottle, which already had the cap removed. I examined the label. It was a microbrew I had never heard of. I took a swig. Yuck, an IPA. Definitely didn’t go with the pizza, but it was beer, and for now, that was good enough.
One hour passed, then two. Somehow, I got looped into a passionate debate with coworkers I barely knew about the state of the Boston Red Sox roster and whether they had done enough in the offseason to be competitive. I was the pessimist in the group. “Did you watch last year?” I said on multiple occasions. “We sucked. We still suck.” (For those keeping score, the Red Sox would go on to win the World Series.)
After three beers and numerous slices of pizza, I felt a pleasant numbness. I wasn’t drunk, but I also wasn’t sober. I checked my phone: 9:30. Crap. I knew I needed to head home, not because I felt like I was going to drink more, but because I knew that once my body went numb and my balance ever-so-slightly worsened, I was entering the falling danger zone.
The laws of my disease were immutable; it was up to me whether or not to obey them.
After two years of falling, every day upright was a gift, a temporary reprieve from the brutal progression of my disease.
I was 26 years old. The first fall occurred six days before my 25th birthday, and ever since, fear was a constant companion in my life. My sense of security disappeared the moment I fell to the ground for the first time. Every step after, I wondered in the back of my mind when it would happen again. Would this be the step? Or this step? Or this step? Over and over. As I would soon learn, the fear of falling saps the joy out of almost any activity.
On the outside, I looked like a normal 26-year-old, of average height and build with wire-rimmed glasses and a misguided attempt at a chin goatee. But on the inside, my muscles, which used to easily support my body weight, were disintegrating before my eyes and there was nothing I could do. Too much exercise damaged my muscles. Too little exercise damaged my muscles. My only hope was to find the elusive middle ground.
Each fall felt like I was losing control of my life, an ambitious, youthful soul stuck in a withering body liable to cease functioning at any moment.
I first noticed signs of muscle weakness after graduating from college in 2008. I shrugged it off as being out of shape. A neurologist a few months later would soon tell me how wrong I was.
In the five years since I began having symptoms, I lost the ability to play basketball, run, carry heavy objects, and climb stairs. Once my knees began to buckle in early 2011, I knew it was only a matter of time before my legs gave out altogether. I knew that would be a terrifying day, but there was nothing I could do but wait.
The first fall was sudden, yet graceful. I went down in perfect falling form as if told to quickly get onto one knee. I was walking to the store with my roommate, who witnessed what happened and asked if I was okay. I pushed myself back up, then mumbled something incoherent. I looked at my hands and saw that they were trembling. I had crossed the Rubicon; there was no going back. Falling was every bit as bad as I had imagined.
In subsequent falls I plopped like a sack of wet cement. Many times, unable to stop my descent, I bloodied my knees and tore open my jeans. Other times I twisted an ankle or bruised an elbow.
Each fall felt like I was losing control of my life, an ambitious, youthful soul stuck in a withering body liable to cease functioning at any moment.
Boston, which used to bring me so much joy, the city where I went to college and worked and made lifelong friends and memories, had lost its luster. Most days I merely existed, resigned to my fate. A successful day for me was making it through the day upright. I became cautious, turning down activities I used to say yes to without hesitation and avoiding errands until the last possible moment. I only left my apartment to go to work, attend church or occasionally grab a beer with friends. Dating was out of the question until further notice, until I could accept what was happening to my body.
So to go four weeks without falling? Yeah, that was worth celebrating.
While gnawing on the pizza crust on my plate, I checked my phone again: 10:30.
I really need to leave.
I swallowed the last bit of crust and got up to head home. I was exhausted, but at least I was now sober. As I put on my coat, I briefly considered taking a cab but opted instead to save the thirty dollars and take the T home. The snow had recently melted, which would make the walk a little more manageable.
I took the elevator down to the ground floor and, once off, pushed open the main door to the street. I was met by a wall of cold air. Ack. A white Metro Cab slowly crawled by me, as if daring me to raise my hand. But I was firm in my resolve. I kept my eyes on the sidewalk; eventually, the driver gave up and sped away.
Thirty minutes later, I was in Cambridge. I disembarked from the Red Line subway train at Central Square and ascended the escalator to street level. I was only halfway done with my journey; I still had a fifteen-minute walk up Massachusetts Avenue back to my apartment.
I also knew from past experience that somewhere along the route there was a loose brick that popped up whenever I was unlucky enough to step on it. I had to find it before it found me.
When I reached street level, I was once again hit with a wall of cold air. Ughhhh. My leg joints, stiff after the long subway ride, protested against the impending exercise. I walked over to a street lamp and leaned my left hand on the pole while I slowly kicked my feet behind me to limber up. My legs felt extra heavy with my metal AFO leg braces, but they were a small price to pay for ankle stability.
Once I was sufficiently limber, I began my trek up Mass. Ave. There were only a handful of people out at this time of night. Once I had walked a few blocks and entered the residential neighborhood between Central and Harvard Squares, there was no one else. Just me.
This part of Mass Ave. - which I learned from past falls and stumbles - had a slight incline, imperceptible to the average person, but to me it might as well have been a steep hill. I walked at a brisk, deliberate pace, taking progressively shorter and shorter steps the more the incline became a factor. By the time I reached Hancock Street, where my apartment was located, my legs were burning.
I stopped at the corner to catch my breath. I took a look down Hancock Street and saw….nothing. It was pitch black, save for a handful of street lights emanating weak orange light. I knew I would have to pay attention to every remaining step.
I also knew from past experience that somewhere along the route there was a loose brick that popped up whenever I was unlucky enough to step on it. I had to find it before it found me.
My heart began to race. I suppressed thoughts about how unfair this was, to have to worry about trivial details such as a loose brick. But at that moment, I didn’t have the luxury to hate the world. I needed to pay attention. Once my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I continued my journey. As I walked, I couldn’t help but smile at the absurdity of it all. Just a grown man out here taking baby steps, on the lookout for bricks.
Up ahead I spotted the brick. I knew that once I passed by it, I was home free. The brick was in the middle of the sidewalk. Just to be safe, I grabbed hold of a waist-high white fence on my right until I was past the obstacle. Once it was behind me, I let out a sigh of relief.
I was almost at the back of my building on Centre Street. The intersection was now only fifty feet away. At the corner, the light was brighter and beckoned me home. All I needed to do was reach the corner, turn left and…thud.
Down I went.
It turns out there was another loose brick.
This type of falling isn’t like tumbling off of a bicycle or tripping over a carpet. It isn’t stumbling and careering like a drunk. It is hard to describe to someone who hasn’t experienced it before. (And I hope you haven’t.)
The best way I can describe it is like taking a step and falling into a void.
The only real-world analogy to this type of fall is a runner who is so exhausted at the end of a race that their legs give out from under them. I’m sure you’ve seen this happen on TV. The runner is huffing and puffing, then their right knee spasms and gives out and they faceplant in the street. But at least for them, despite the embarrassment, they can get up.
Each step became like playing step roulette. Eventually, I was going to lose.
The problem is the quadriceps muscle. For someone who is able-bodied - of which I was once in their ranks - leg muscles are sufficient to bear the weight of stepping forward. The quadriceps and other muscles surrounding the knee stabilize the joint ever so briefly, then it is relieved of duty as the next leg takes its place. This happens over and over again, without a second thought.
At this stage in my progression, most of my steps were successful. The problem was the occasional step that never completed.
Each step became like playing step roulette. Eventually, I was going to lose.
I immediately felt a sharp pain in my left kneecap, the knee that gave out when my heel stepped on the loose brick at an awkward angle.
Oh, God. Not again.
My heart began to pound so hard that I could feel the thumping in my eardrums. I tried to breathe in cold air to calm myself but to no avail. I started to panic.
Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.
While on my knees, I thought back to my previous fall. I barely got up under my own power then. It took every ounce of strength. Was I going to be able to do it now? My limbs felt weak and heavy. Even though I hadn’t fallen in a month, I was still one month weaker.
Before I could find out the answer, my attention turned to the sharp pains I was beginning to feel in my palms. I turned my hands over and saw a mess of gravel, dirt and torn skin. Little flecks of blood oozed out of my right hand.
This pain was then eclipsed by a deeper, burning pain on my left kneecap. I jettisoned my backpack and rolled onto my left side to relieve the pressure on my knees. I pulled my left knee in towards my chest to examine the wound. Great. I had torn my jeans at the kneecap and blood was oozing out of that wound as well.
After a couple of minutes, I turned my attention to the task at hand: I had to get up. I attempted to catch my breath but felt my throat begin to close. I forced the air into my throat to stifle the panic attack bubbling up inside me.
Breathe, Chris. Don’t panic.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
There you go. In and out. In and out. Good.
I took a quick look at my surroundings. I was all alone. No one on the street. No lights on in the houses around me. Nothing. Just a few parked cars and darkness.
I turned over onto my knees and winced at the sensation of raw skin on cold, gritty brick. This part is going to hurt. I counted to three, then pressed onto the sidewalk as hard as I could in an attempt to force myself airborne.
If I could just get my legs under me….
Part of me hoped someone would come by to help me up. But there was no one to save me. I was on my own.
I pushed with all my might, made it about three-quarters of the way into a standing position, before my arms gave out from the exertion. I fell back onto the ground, pain like tiny knives penetrating my kneecaps.
Oh, God. Oh, God. What do I do now?
My limbs trembled and ached from exhaustion. My heart pounded so fast that I began to see flashing stars. I was convinced that I was going to black out, alone, on a dark street corner.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
I waited a few minutes until I was certain that I wouldn’t pass out.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Until the trembling in my limbs subsided, I couldn’t go very far anyways. For several minutes, I sat motionless on the sidewalk. Part of me hoped someone would come by to help me up. But there was no one to save me. I was on my own.
I turned and stared at the white picket fence I used to navigate around the loose brick. Suddenly, a plan formed in my mind’s eye. Yes, I will use the fence. I grabbed a hold of the fence at the bottom. It had some give to it, which was going to make it harder to use for leverage, but it was worth a shot.
I moved my backpack close to the fence and, after psyching myself up, pulled as hard as I could, working my way up the fence with my hands until my legs lifted off the ground. Don’t fail me now. After several seconds, despite the protestations of the sagging fence, I made it into a standing position.
I let out a deep, triumphant scream that echoed down the barren street.
I was dead tired, cold air stinging my lungs with every breath, but I was up. I leaned over to grab my backpack. Once it was over my shoulders, I found it hard to let go of the fence. It was good to be standing, but I was afraid of what came next. But I couldn’t hold onto the fence forever. I had to make it home.
I took one baby step, then another, holding onto the fence as insurance. The fence was now tilted slightly forward, which I felt bad about, but not bad enough to stop me from the task at hand.
After a few more steps, the fence ended. It was time to let go.
One step in front of the other, Chris. One, Now the other. There you go.
My legs were achy and stiff. My knees were starting to swell. I had a narrow window of opportunity to make it home before I became immobilized. After several steps without aid, I regained a small measure of confidence that I’d be okay.
You can do this.
The street sign for Centre Street came into view. I was almost home free.
But it was not meant to be. As I went to turn left for the last leg of the journey, my right knee spasmed, then gave out.
Down again.
Defeated, I turned my palms over. More gravel. More dirt. More blood. Both knees had failed me within a matter of minutes.
There was no way I was going to be able to pull myself up again.
What do I do now?
The last time I spent an extended period of time on a sidewalk, was in the moments following a car accident during my senior year of high school. My friend was driving me home from the movies when a pickup truck collided with the front passenger side of his red Saab. My door was smashed in two feet, which left me no choice but to drag my bruised and lacerated body out the driver’s side door, which was unscathed.
As we waited for the ambulance to arrive, I sat on the sidewalk, dazed, the entire right side of my body in pain, unsure whether or not I was dead, dying, or perfectly fine.
The path to acceptance is an internal tug-of-war, with resistance at every stage.
At the hospital, they ruled out internal injuries, but I was still not out of the woods. Right before I left the hospital, a young female doctor came into my room to declare that my blood test results were “off”. My creatine kinase level - usually a marker of muscle breakdown - was hundreds of times higher than it should have been. I was wheeled back into the X-ray room, only to have the imaging come up clean once again. “You need to follow up with a specialist,” she said with concern in her voice. “It could be an underlying disease.”
Thus began a year-long diagnostic odyssey, one that culminated with a diagnosis of muscular dystrophy. I had just graduated from high school and had no discernable muscle weakness. How could I have a muscle disease?
It was a question that was still left unresolved as I headed off to college. Fortunately for me, I had no symptoms the entire time I was in school. The longer I was symptom-free, the further the disease receded from my mind.
Then the weakness began, almost on cue, after graduation.
As the symptoms progressed, I wrestled with the disease every which way. First I denied it. Then, when I was unable to stop the progression, I surrendered to it. I accepted it, but didn’t accept it. I knew it was there, inside of me, a fact of life. But I couldn’t believe that I actually had a disease.
Acceptance does not follow a set formula. Even when you know you should accept something, even when you know that it’s not your fault, it doesn’t mean that acquiescence is right around the corner. The path to acceptance is an internal tug-of-war, with resistance at every stage.
The longer I denied what was happening to me, the longer I deluded myself that I could reverse the progression and rebuild muscle, the harder the emotional crash when the truth became clear. The cascade of disease milestones and lost abilities sent me into an emotional spiral.
Even today, I have conflicting emotions about what has happened to me. I have since accepted my lot in life, and have even come to appreciate the many blessings along the way. I have learned that my self-worth is not tied to my level of strength, which was an important lesson to internalize.
But even with a healthier relationship with this disease, there is one unmistakable fact: it is exhausting.
Alone, on the corner of Hancock and Centre Street, stranded between hope and despair, I could feel myself reaching the end of the line. Between the physical exertion, the weakness, the pain, and the adrenaline, I was spent. I was tapped out.
What now? If life was testing me, I had no answers.
What now, Chris?
The question wouldn’t leave me alone. My inner voice screamed for a resolution. Or was it mocking me? I didn’t know anymore. I didn’t care.
I spotted a bush ten feet to my right. Wouldn’t it be nice to just crawl over there, curl into a fetal position, and just let life pass me by? I could cover myself with a nice rock, and chill there for a while. I stared at the bush for several more seconds. I was giving it serious consideration.
Stop, Chris. Just stop it. I was now at war with myself.
But Chris! How are you going to get up?
How am I supposed to know? Leave me alone.
I sat and pondered. Several more minutes passed.
Just give up, Chris.
I felt a wave of guilt. My cousin had recently passed away. Carly, my dear friend and coworker, was sick. Who was I to be fed up with life? This was just a battle with gravity. How could I be so selfish?
I pulled out my phone: 11:20. I could just call 911. Sure, it would be embarrassing, but it would do the job. The firefighters could come and walk me back to my apartment. They might think I am drunk, but if that’s the price for making it back in one piece, so be it.
I sat and debated what to do. My limbs were achy and numb, but the acute pain had subsided for the moment.
Are you going to give up, Chris?
“No,” I said out loud. “No. I’m not going out like this.” I don’t know who I was talking to but it was reassuring to hear the words come out of my mouth.
All of a sudden, I felt an energy come over me as if God had taken over my body and wrestled control. To this day, I like to believe it was God nudging me forward, but whatever the source of the inspiration, it filled me with an inner resolve to continue the painful charade.
I had one good try left in me.
Part of the reason I was in this situation in the first place was because I had resisted getting crutches. Not the kind you use after you break your foot. I’m talking Lofstrand crutches, the ones with the cuffs that you slip your forearms into, with handles for gripping. Those crutches.
The deterioration of my strength required adaptive equipment, but I resisted as long as I could. When I needed leg braces after my first fall in 2011, I waited several months to get them, despite the obvious need for stability.
Why did I resist?
Part of it was pride. In my mind at the time, I felt that adaptive equipment was a form of surrender, an admission that I had given up on all other options. If I got the equipment, there was no going back.
The other part of it was stigma. I never needed an assistive device before, because I was never disabled. But now? I was telling the world I had a disability.
Of course, I now realize that a disability is nothing to be ashamed of, and that a mutation in my muscle cells is not an indictment of my character. Just because society still hasn’t fully accommodated people with disabilities doesn’t mean I should have less self-worth. But I have the benefit of hindsight now; at the time I lived through this transition, when my world was crumbling all around me, I wasn’t able to properly grapple with these issues.
Resisting was a way to prolong the inevitable. Instead, it prolonged the pain.
Against all reason and better judgment, I resolved to give it one more shot. If I failed again, I would call for help.
There was no fence nearby, but even then, I wasn’t going to be strong enough to use it for leverage. I scanned the immediate area. About ten feet away were two parked cars - a green sedan and a black SUV. Another idea formed in my head.
If I crawl over, maybe I can push myself up using the bumper of one car and the hood of the other.
I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea or a terrible idea, but my brain was shutting down from the stress and the cold and my logical brain was nowhere to be found. For now, it was good enough.
It was as if the entire neighborhood evacuated the scene to watch this human curiosity play out.
I began to crawl in the direction of the cars. I pulled my long-sleeve button-down shirt over the wounds on my hands and made short, deliberate movements in the direction of the curb. My knees were raw and cold.
Holy crap, this hurts.
As I crawled, I thought about how ridiculous I looked. I began to laugh. I looked around - surely someone had to be seeing this? But I was still alone.
Where is everyone?
It was as if the entire neighborhood evacuated the scene to watch this human curiosity play out. Was this entertainment or a tragedy?
Two minutes later, I reached the curb and the two parked cars. I touched the metal of the sedan bumper and the hood of the SUV, to get a feel for the texture and to figure out where to place my hands at the moment of exertion. The metal of the cars was ice cold. With open wounds on my hands, I figured I was a shoo-in for tetanus, but that was a worry for another day.
I’m really doing this. Okay.
I knelt in between the two cars and placed my hands in position. There was a decent chance I would blow out one or both shoulders and a small possibility that I’d be found the next day in between the two cars, but I had to try.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.
My heart was pounding. My body knew what was at stake.
Three. Two. One.
With all my might, lifting as hard as I possibly could, oblivious to the pain of my joints and wounds, I slowly, methodically pushed myself into a standing position. With each inch of ascent, I start to believe more and more that this ludicrous plan might just work.
Halfway through, I began to feel a searing pain in my neck. I was pulling a muscle, but I had to keep going.
Almost there. Almost there.
I begin to see stars again. Almost thereeeeeee. I let out a guttural noise in the final stretch. And then, almost as soon as it began, it was over. I was up. Somehow, against all odds, I was standing.
I keeled over onto the hood of the SUV, ready to throw up. I half expected a round of applause from onlookers and spectators emerging from the woodwork, but there was only silence.
No one saw me fall. No one saw me get back up. No witnesses to my hour of testing. Except me. I saw it, and it was glorious.
After several seconds, I pushed myself off the hood into a standing position. I couldn’t celebrate just yet. I still had to get home.
Let’s face it. You are expecting another fall in this story. I don’t blame you.
But I made it. Somehow, improbably, I made it the rest of the way home in one piece. It took baby steps and holding onto every conceivable object - fence, tree branch, street light - on the way to my apartment, but I made it.
After I unlocked my apartment door, I let it slam. BOOM. A gratifying sound of success. The heat in the apartment was soothing, but before I could collapse onto my bed, I needed to clean up.
I threw my backpack onto the couch and made a beeline to the bathroom. I turned on the faucet and let the hot water run until it was warm enough to thaw my cold, injured hands. I scrubbed the blood, gravel and dirt out from my wounds, wincing at the burning but satisfied by the sensation. When I sat down later, I would clean up and bandage my knees.
There was no question that as soon as I went to bed, I was going to scream into my pillow. It was the most traumatic night of my life to date, one that would have ripple effects I didn’t yet comprehend or appreciate.
There was also no question that changes were going to be in order. I had no choice; I had to get crutches now, no matter the perceived stigma. Staying upright with crutches was less humiliating than being sprawled out on a sidewalk. Safer too.
I shut off the faucet and wiped my hands with a bath towel. Before I headed to my room, I took one last look at myself in the mirror. My brown hair was matted with sweat on my forehead. My eyes were red and puffy.
I looked at a soul that was beaten down by life. But there I was, still standing. Bloodied, sore, potentially with latent tetanus, but standing. I had measured up to the challenge.
And on that night, that was good enough. There would be more tests to come. It was time to rest up.
I have a confession to make. I didn’t write this just for you; I also wrote it for myself. This disease has been beating me down a bit recently, and I have been in a funk. It is a feeling I’ve experienced before when I’ve encountered new disease milestones, but it never gets easier.
I didn’t write this to be inspirational. I didn’t write this to be told I am brave or to be pitied. I didn’t write this as some larger social commentary on disability or body image or ableism, although those are valid themes worth exploring at another time. I simply wrote this because I needed a reminder that I can still do hard things.
I think back to this night often, and what I proved to myself. Bloodied, bruised, and frustrated, I found a way to keep going. (I did not end up getting tetanus, thankfully.) It was a traumatic night, one where I was forced to confront my disease head-on, but it was a night when I realized I am a lot stronger than I give myself credit for. This was a pivotal revelation on my path to acceptance.
I wish I could report that life got easier after that night, but it didn’t. The tests kept coming. Ten days later, Carly passed away, which shook me to my core emotionally. That pain took much longer to overcome than a fall.
But if there’s anything I’ve learned this past decade, it’s that life is a struggle. Life is beautiful, but it is also full of adversity. There are no clean and easy narratives in life, no matter what anyone says. Life is messy.
In tough moments, it is important to remember the times when you’ve overcome past challenges. This was my story, but I’m sure there are stories in your own life where you never thought you’d overcome a tragedy or a setback, but you did. Even getting up to face the day is a form of triumph.
As painful as it might be, recall these moments. Put yourself back in time, if possible, and relive the emotions. Then, think about how you got through it, the perspective you gained, and what you’ve learned.
We are all stronger than we know.
"In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present."
- Francis Bacon
Oh, gosh. Wow. What a post! Thank you so much for sharing this really close-to-the-bone experience. I’m grateful, because it’s taken me back to a fall of my own, where I think I need to go to unpack some of my own history: the lowest six steps of the concrete staircase at a London tube station. I didn’t know I was ill, but with hindsight it was obvious.
Your posts are great, Chris - thank you again for this one. Sending strength.
Your experience is very moving, Christopher.