“People may think you’re giving up, when in fact you are simply giving in to the reality of your new life” – Toni Berhard, How to Be Sick: A Buddhist Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers
When you have a disability and suffer from chronic pain, sometimes your achievements will be weaponised; “You could handle making a web series so you could handle having a job.” In fact, I can see how it must look from the outside, when I walk into social engagements bursting with energy, when my artistic output appears impressive to some, it can be hard to look at me and understand how small my life can be from the inside. In fact, I think I’ve tended to keep the smallness of my life hidden out of shame. Now that I have observed this about myself, it is my intention to attempt to shed this shame and open up about the realities of my existence.
Surrounding every achievement of mine is a lot of empty time where I wander about the house, perhaps doing a little bit of gentle housework, listening to music, taking naps with my cats, staring at the wall and crying. This time is my rest time, my recovery time, there is a lot of it and it has intersections with depression. In fact, there is evidence that chronic pain and depression access similar pathways in the brain and so when I am having a pain flare, it is likely to include depression. This lowers my cognitive capacities so that this time is not a productive time where, say, I am reading, learning, studying and resourcefully making the most of my situation by enriching my mind. It’s not like that, it is instead a time where days drift by in a haze of chronic pain and a constant contending with the grief of all the years in my life that have been lost in this limbo of non-achievement.
I have this aspect of myself that is incredibly ambitious, driven by a desire to explore every inch of existence, to travel the world, to make art with every breath, to create just as much as I consume. It is a fire, a passion, a drive and sometimes a mania and anxiety, a fear of missing out, a fear of ceasing to exist. That part of myself has forever been in battle with the realities of my limited capabilities. It is a simple fact that my body responds poorly to a great deal of activity, this is inclusive of stress which causes my muscles to seize and my neuropathic pain to burn and bubble. It is a simple truth that I must surround my achievements with more downtime than most inhabitants of Western cultures could perhaps conceive of.
For most of my life as a person with a disability, there has been no pleasure or joy in this downtime, laced as it has been with shame. What does this shame look like? It is a shame around being financially dependent on others, on not being a productive and contributing member of society, on not reaching my potential. Sprinkled amongst the shame has been fear, fear of missing out, of wasting my life, of how I could possibly survive without the assistance of others. Finally, there is an emotion below all that which is the most raw and painful and that emotion is grief, grief for all the days when I stare longingly at my paintbrushes and have to walk away, grief for the long gone days when I could hold a book up on a train, grief for the bed-ridden little girl I was who spent so much time staring at her ceiling, grief for every other person who has to sit and watch the rivers of life flowing past them.
But over the last year, I have adopted a sort of secular Buddhism that fits within my own life philosophies and values. Included within this Buddhism are meditative practices that I am slowly getting more skilled at as well as regularly engaging in concepts of self-compassion and loving kindness. Through these practices, I am learning to sit more gently and kindly with reality and learning to allow myself joy that shines through my suffering. It is not a joy that denies the difficult truths of things, it doesn’t negate my pain, nor minimise my struggles, however when I accept the reality of my life and am gentle with myself, it makes all these quiet days more bearable.
Often, when I wander the house with a burning body and a blank mind, I feel the tightening sensations of self-loathing and sorrow. Here I am, getting older, here I am with a life half spent in a sort of nonexistence, how pathetic I sometimes see myself as being. It is a cruelty of the constructions of our culture that we believe our only values are in how busy we are, how much money we make, how much we put out into the world and how attractive we remain while doing so. It is a cruel game, it is one I am simply unable to play and I’m tired of feeling as if I have to justify my life. I am allowed to just be. There is no law in the universe that requires proof of our right to exist, a flower, a tadpole, a pebble, a sunbeam, a teardrop… none of them ever worry about their worth.
I sit outside on my deck crying for the third time today until eventually the tears cease. I breathe. I watch clouds morph and merge in the springtime sky. I breathe. I sit with my pain with gentleness, putting less emotional energy into investing it with value judgements that are always so cruel. My cat chirps at me and jumps onto my lap, her fur is luxury to my fingertips. My heart swells with joy and love and gratitude.
I’ll cry again. These cycles will happen again. I breathe. I accept. It’s a relief to let myself be in exactly what I am. This isn’t giving up, this is letting go of the struggle against reality. Much of my life is lived very quiet and very small. That’s ok, there is so much beauty right here, right in the midst of the suffering.