I've always had a wild heart. Even as a small child I have always craved the adventure and the excitement that can be found out there in the vast crevices of the world.
I wanted everything.
The bright lights of a busy city. To know what it would feel like to be standing on top of a mountain. To dance in the middle of the street under the Roman Colosseum. To experience all the different tastes from around the world. To enrich my knowledge by learning at a university. To meet influential people. To make life long friendships. To swim in all four oceans. To feel the feelings you get when you dedicate your career to serving other lives. To find eternal love. To give life to another human. To spend my life feeling free.
And although, I have loved doing many and more of those things listed above. I feel myself now trapped. Something comparable to a caged bird. Trapped in a body incapable of living the life I once pictured myself having. The grand plans I had for my life, slip away as I feel sicker and sicker, day by day. Sometimes it seems acceptable, some days I forget about it all, and live day by day. Some days it's okay and I still find happiness and love in many things. I always am and always will be appreciative and grateful and humbled by the immense amount of blessings I have.
But some days it's not okay.
It's not okay that I'm 26 and that I am suffering from a list of cruel diseases. It's not okay that I can't walk some days without total pain. It's not okay I can't breathe without the stabbing, burning pain I feel in my chest. It's not okay that I woke up one morning and couldn't move my hands anymore, or write my name, or type anymore, and that that went on for days at a time. It's not okay that doctor's no longer have solutions or answers for the bad tests results that have my name on them. It's not okay that I see myself losing mobility and that nobody knows the answers to fix it. It's not okay that I'm not even able to travel to see my best friend. It's not okay that my memory is failing me and I can't articulate the things I want to say anymore because of the chemo therapy I've had or the medicines I use. It's not okay that I see people around me thriving in life while I feel like I'm not. It's not okay that I sit alone all day in pain and look out the window wanting to dance and to feel the sunshine.
Some days it's just not okay.
There's a remarkable quote by Anne Frank that says; "I keep trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, what I could be" ... she goes on in her amazing words to say; "I don't think of all the misery but all the beauty that still remains." Lastly in her diary she states; "Where there is hope, there's life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again."
I have no life comparable to Anne Frank, but if you've read her diary, or known others who have been through turmoil, or been with anyone with more public trials and tribulations, you know there is a time where life gets hard. You must even know this in your very own life. Where everything just becomes too much or unbearable or just to painful. Where you feel dreams slipping away, where reality becomes a ticking time bomb, where you feel hope is lost.
I've felt this way. I know everyone has. One of my favorite quotes is; "Be kind, for everyone you meeting is fighting a hard battle." That can't be more true, because everyone is fighting, in one way or another, either publicly or silently. That's why I do not wish for pity, or for people to feel sorry for me. (That's not why I'm writing this.) But this is also why and how I know there is hope in the world and especially hope for me. Because I realize I'm not alone in this feeling. Everyone must know the feeling, of grief, of unhappiness or when you feel like life is over and that so much is lost or gone. No one person has the same life, but at one moment or another people have traveled down the road of true sadness and hardship, And at that moment people have one of the biggest choices to make, to dwell in the turmoil and sadness, or to let that moment eventually pass by and live with hope.
I've seen this moment pass for so many people. I've seen it pass for myself. I've seen people in the midst of what feels like the end of the world, choose hope. I have seen many people challenge the odds, and go on living life. To go on to make a better life for themselves and others. To go on living with hope. That is why each morning I still get up, get dressed, continue through the pain. This is why I still love my life. Why I choose to smile, even though some days it's just NOT OKAY. Because that's what you do to keep, keeping on. You get up, even though it hurts, even though you don't want to, you keep going even though giving up feels like a real option. Because you still have and hold on to hope.
Someone once told me that the word hope really stands for, Hold-On-Pain-Ends. I have that one word tattooed on me. Tattooed in my mother's handwriting even. I stare at it daily. I let it remind me always of it's true meaning, because I believe it and because I will always hold on, because I know pain ends.
