My Disease and Remedy

A sobering story about my life and my disease, my humanity and hope.  Purpose: to reach aching hearts who have been served a tough lot and may need a helping hand to get up.  Read on, if you may.

The air, cold, but yet beginning to warm in the midday sun, hit my pale, winter-worn face as I started for the door.  My dark hair, long and always in my face, I threw up hastily in a ponytail with that heavily used elastic always around my wrist as I jolted down the stairs from my second floor apartment to taste the fresh, cool air— I just couldn’t delay a moment to escape from my cramped habitation I had so long passed time in during a long, tumultuous winter, equal in might and vigor to nearly all New England winters.  I entered the outdoors.  No cars, no one in sight— just me, my beating heart, and the pavement as I hit the road on foot for a stroll in my peaceful neighborhood, mountains surrounding me, and buildings covered in white, here and there scattered throughout the town as if a winter fairy came sprinkling her magic dust over the valley.  It was just like any late winter day in my town, the air crisp and cool, yet invigorating. Really nothing extraordinary to be told.  But as I left for my much-desired and enjoyable walk that March day in 2011, I didn’t know I would return forever changed, forever different, but that is indeed what I became— different…or so I thought for years to come.

March, April, May, June, July, August, the months go on— Energy, excitement, exercise, adrenaline— all these joys and pleasures had swiftly become my enemy.  How could this be?  Why?  I walk, I hike, I exert myself, and I am altogether punished for it like a man gratuitously condemned to perpetual punishment simply for being human.  My favorite activity has always been hiking, but I said to myself:

 “Forget it!— no more.  Robbed.  You are robbed.  Don’t dream.” 

And so my thoughts plunged into the darkest recesses of my mind where the strangling and dominating demons lied in wait to tackle and destroy my hope.

Depression.

                       Hopelessness.

         "What is this?"

                         "Why is this happening to me?"

Image source: https://www.mentalhealthrehab.com/

"Life isn’t what I thought it was."

"Things like this don’t happen to me;  I’m innocent, blameless."

"Please someone remind me….

What is this life for?"

These thoughts were screeching in my mind and inundated my soul after I was plagued starting that March day with some…thing…that no doctor seems to understand.  Like an alien.  That’s what it felt like.  That’s what I felt like.  When my adrenaline got too high, or I exerted myself too much, the inside corners of my eyes would fill up with watery liquid, like tears. It looks like blisters…no, better yet, tumors, that ail me for hours and continue to remind me of my pitiful condition for days after by leaving me with baggy, puffy eyes after this ailment has come to attack me like a boa constrictor attacks its prey, coming in, squeezing, slowly, slowly, slowly taking it down.  My body, my soul, my spirit.  Down for the count.

If it couldn’t get worse, November 2012 happened.  At this point, I’ve overcome this affliction…sort of…I think I have.  A little, maybe.  At least I can cope at this point.  But then I’m playing laser tag with my bro and sis that cold November evening, the darkness hovering in the sky like a bat hovering over its insect prey.  Winter is coming; it was apparent by the frigid, biting air and this blackness that swooped in so early in the afternoon, and it would only get darker, and earlier.  Good thing we are inside and having a great time, and I think to myself “I can control this affliction!”  Lasers are being thrown.  Lights flashing.  Hiding.  Seeking.  Waiting.  Tagging.  Being tagged.  Adrenaline freely flowing from the anticipation of the next hit.  Game ends.  I exit the arena.  At first it seems that my eyes were not attacked, all seemed well. Maybe I defeated this like I defeated my siblings in the game!  But then…my body…what’s happening?  Itchy.  Everything.  My eyes, my skin, my ears, my stomach, my back, my arms!  My skin is crawling as if being consumed by fire!  Hives, a million itchy red bumps, have covered me from hips to head.  Life would never be the same…

Since that day, I had not been the same.  Depression overcame me, even worse than before.  As if the first affliction on my eyes were not enough, now my whole body had been taken over by some thing that seemed to take immense pleasure in depriving me of mine.  Could I live a full life while suffering from these bizarre afflictions?  

“I’m not normal.  How could this happen to me?”  

At the time, I was working at a busy restaurant at a ski resort.  I exerted myself a lot, and I reaped the consequences more than I had wanted to.  In front of the public eye, I had to cope with what I must have looked like to all my customers and coworkers with my blistered eyes and red, bumpy skin.  To say I was embarrassed would be deceptive in truly revealing what I felt inside; what I really felt was ostracized, even though it was only my own demons that convinced me of that.  Regardless, life had to go on, and this was my means of making a living.

For some time after the discovery of my unforgiving afflictions and unwillingly partaking in the sobering effects of this life, I took up a hobby that would not make my body break out into a million small itchy bumps and my eyes to swell like balloons— drinking.  Yes, I drank.  The bottle became my one companion that could be true to killing the pain and self-loathing I felt in my heart.  The first summer with this affliction, I stayed inside almost the entire season.  The sun was too hot, the beach was out of the question, so I stayed indoors, me and my bottle and my TV.  I was enveloped with self-pity.    

Image source: http://www.designknock.com/

Maybe it took me too long to figure this out, but I discovered that I was now living a selfish, defeated life.  I had allowed some mystery force to overcome my body, my soul, and my mind.  As my soul lay prostrate on the dirty ground, littered with fear and depression, a light shone on me from the darkness.  I don’t know whether it came from within me or beyond me, but I got up off the floor.  I brushed off my bruised soul, and I began to heal.  The first thing I brushed off me was self-pity—That had to be the first thing to go.  Then, within moments of deciding to take a stance agains that, I found the fortitude to dust off despair and fear.  When I could do this, hope was again able to grow in my heart, and this became my most effective weapon.  From there, I stopped drinking from the bottle and took up the fountain of life.  

Image source: http://facethemusicfoundation.org/blog-2/

This summer is the first since my affliction that I have truly been able to spread my wings and fly again; last year I started at it, but other circumstances kept me down, but at least it was a start.  Today, the symptoms still exist, but since I decided to not let it overcome me, I have noticed that I have been able to do more, get away with more, exercise more.  I test my limits, and I know now what I can get away with, which is much more than ever before. I’m not yet hiking up a mountain, but I think I will again someday, when I defeat the limitations of my mind. I believe this is a true testimony to the power of the mind and spirit.  If you allow yourself to be overcome, overcome you will be.  If you fight against the forces that try to pin you down, you will win, maybe not every time, but with every attack there is a battle; sometimes you win battles and sometimes you lose them.  But if you do not declare war, there are no battles, and by default you succumb to your enemy’s desires.  

I share this story not for pity or sympathy but because these past few years, I have been hiding behind a curtain of shame, and for what?  I am human, so are you.  All of us have struggles, however different they may be.  This account of my life is meant to give hope to those who are struggling.  Pick up your sword and find the strength to fight whatever it is you’re suffering from.  Do not succumb to your enemy, and if you feel depressed, I promise that hope is in you; just dig deep, and you’ll gather the strength to find it.  Do not live in shame; rather, overcome, and your story of victory could inspire the life of another. 

We aren’t so different.