Living with a chronic disease for over 13 years gives me a lot of time and space to struggle, experiment, learn and reflect.
I still remember in my early 20s, I felt there was a hole in my body and I was a damaged goods. I was in denial. I felt sorry for myself. I wasn’t treating myself well. At that time, I struggled with holding a pen with my right hand, so I taught my left hand to write. But every time I wrote, I would cry from the start to the end. For months, I couldn’t walk, so I ran. But I fell so many times because of the balance problem, my knees were bloody all the time. I didn’t know how to deal with the huge change in life, so much uncertainty, so little hope. I battled with it from the moment of waking up to falling asleep every single day. I was exhausted and lost.
I started learning to live better with it after over ten years of suffering. That morning, I wanted a coffee as usual. Walking to the kitchen felt like a long journey. I had to take a rest, lean on the wall and breathe every step I took. When I was using all my strength to switch on the faucet, I bursted into tears. Why everything has to be so hard? I’ve trained myself not to feel any emotions over the years, but at that moment, the bottled emotions erupted and buried my whole body. I stood there in the kitchen, shocked, my whole body was shaking, and I decided to change.
How do I love myself? What’s my role in this world?
