The Greatest Currency

I have been up all night, so forgive any typos or grammar errors. I am frustrated and I feel like saying this, and so, I will.

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I know it cannot be fully appreciated until it's gone but do one thing for me, today. 

Cherish your health, your sleep, your ability to rely on your body to walk or go out or even watch TV. Cherish it. Think about it. Just think about your feet and your hands and how nice it is to move and dance and breathe. How lovely cold tile feel on barefeet in the summer and how good water pressure can make you suddenly awake.

Teach yourself to remember this when you are dealing with a sick or elderly friend or family member. Try to remember how upset and annoyed you are when you have a cold or a stomach bug or allergies. How you feel failed and frustrated and cranky. Imagine how the chronically ill and dying feel about their bodies, constantly in pain and criminally uncomfortable.

Good health is freedom. Good health is a currency to covet. Good health is everything. And for the past few weeks, I especially have lusted for it. 

Because It is so much harder to be without it and still want to live. It is so much harder to be a friend because hiding away is easier, because your pain is not on display, because you can sleep and in sleep, you are free. Living without health does not take away the world's beauties or reasons to stay alive, but it leaves you feeling caged. Stuck in the exit row of the plane that waits listlessly on the tarmac as you alternate between feeling hot and cold.

So, please:

Love your body and take care of it. These are things I need to do, and I think we should all do them together. We should all learn these lessons together. Good health doesn't last forever. But let's make it last for as long as we can.

And thank you to all of you who have shown me kindness along the way. It means the world to me.

Love,

Kelly

Depression and Some Other Stuff

Hi. I haven't been here in awhile.

It's not that I don't have the time. Boy, do I have the time. I have the time to watch TV and babysit my niece and take long rides to the beach on the bike my legs are too short for.

I have the time. But writing or reading might remind me that I should write or read, and I don't think I'm ready for that.

But maybe I am. Yes. Here I am.

In May, I was put on a drug for nerve pain. I immediately had a bad reaction to it, and we reduced the dose. Two weeks later, I held a bottle of morphine in my hand and did the math.

It'd probably take a few of these plus a couple of Xanax to kill me. I held the bottle in my hand and thought about it, how I wanted to be dead without having to do it.

But I stopped.

I reached out and I got some help and I saw a guy, a doctor. He told me that the drug had caused a really bad reaction, making me suicidal.

I would describe myself as prone to depression. I have a million excuses: I've basically been bed-ridden for 9 months. I am living at home. I don't and can't work. Writing is fleeting when I feel like this. It's hard to get me out when I'm sick.

One thing stood out every time I thought about ending my life. My niece's face. It shone like a sun every time I collapsed into the blackness of my head, of my bed. I could never do it, I thought. I would never ruin my family and friends' lives like that.

But boy, did I want out. I wanted no more of the lupus, the pain, the depression. The loneliness and fear and boredom. I just wanted to sleep.

I don't know when I started to get a little happier. I think it was around when I booked my trip to Washington. That gave me something to look forward to.

Eventually the drugs flushed out of my system and I was no longer on the floor. But sometimes, I'll catch myself crying over nothing, though those days are less and less now.

I guess I wanted to say that there is where I've been. Under my covers, wishing the rain to stop and the sun to shine. Grasping for glimmers of summer and riding that until I am out of my bed and biking to the beach to see that sun rise.

If you feel the ways I've just described, please get help. Not everyone is going to understand but someone will, and they will save your life.

Thank you for your support. I am feeling less like a Cymablta commercial and more like a real person. I'm blessed. We all are.

I am out of bed and I am smiling and I wish the same for all of you.